How to Triangulate a Phone
Cell phone triangulation is simply cell phone tracking. You basically take two points (two cellular towers) and locate the distance to a third point (mobile phone). This is achieved by measuring the angles that are formed between the first two points and the third point. In short, it is simple trigonometry where you draw two lines at given angles until they intersect at a common point; hence forming the triangle. Since phone triangulations track the signal strength of cell phone towers, it may not be possible to triangulate a phone without paying a fee to the telephone company.
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Instructions
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Turn on the mobile phone. Cell phones that are powered on need a strong signal; they need to be in continuous relay with the cell phone towers nearby.
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Contact the cell phone service provider and ask a representative to provide you with information about the particular cell phone's position and location at a certain time. Note the signal strength of the cell phone from three different towers. These towers basically receive radio signals from mobile phones and pass them on to other cell phone towers. Therefore, it is important to get the data from three towers. Upon request, the cell phone service provider will give you the precise measurements of radii from the three towers.
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Plot the three radii on a map. First, draw the radius of the first tower (with the strongest signal); the cell phone will be located somewhere within that radius.
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Draw the radius of the second tower (with second strongest signal). Your drawing will have two overlapping circles now.
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Plot out the third tower (with the third strongest signal). Your drawing will now contain an intersection point of the three radii. The point where the three circles intersect is roughly the area where the phone is located. See the link in Resources for a detailed explanation of measurements of the radii.
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Tips & Warnings
Even though cell phone triangulation is extremely helpful in some cases, there are some privacy issues concerning this matter in the United States. To keep the cost of cell phone tracking to a minimum, you can seek out free services like Mologogo.com that let you sign up for GPS-enabled mobile phones to keep track of them.
The process of phone triangulation requires thorough information on cell phone towers and their connection with cell phones. This information requires extensive technology, which is not accessible to most people. You have to contact the cell phone provider, but even then the company does not provide full information for casual perusal. You may have to prove the purpose of the information to the company. For instance, Verizon provides this service (Chaperone) for keeping track of childrens' cell phones.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit cell image by Lee O"Dell from Fotolia.com
