Why A Tracker Needs LBS And WiFi As Well As GPS

The problem with satellites alone

A GPS receiver needs a view of the sky. Park in a basement, sit inside a container stack or drive between tall buildings and the fix degrades or disappears. For a fleet report, that reads as a gap in the trip.

What LBS adds

Location based service positioning uses the mobile base station the device is already talking to. It is coarser than satellite, but it exists indoors. Our R-18 runs GPS plus GSM base station dual tracking for exactly this reason.

What WiFi adds

In dense urban areas WiFi access points give a useful fix without a satellite view. G25 and the L08P watch both list WiFi among their positioning ways, alongside satellites and LBS.

Which constellations

Our devices use combinations of GPS, BDS and GLONASS depending on the module. G07E runs Beidou plus GPS on an AT6558R with 32 satellite channels, and G59 adds GLONASS with 64 channels. More constellations means more usable satellites in a poor sky view.

What to check when specifying

Ask which positioning ways a device actually supports, not just its accuracy figure. A device quoted at under 10 metres accuracy is useless if it has no fallback the moment the sky is blocked.