Implementation of GPS for location tracking

Stand alone global positioning system receivers are widely used nowadays to accurately locating one´s position. By using stand alone GPS receivers the distance between two locations on earth can also be measured. This project is aim to design and implement a low cost Global Positioning System suitable to be used for hiking, climbing and sailing activities. The function of the GPS is to locate the position of user. The effects of line of sights in relation to different experimented locations are also studied. In this project, the hardware used is PIC18F4520 integrated with GPS receiver typed FV-M8. The GPS modules will generate the coordinates of latitude and longitude as well as the bearing angles between two positions. The algorithm to calculate the distance between two positions was developed by using PIC C Compiler. The written algorithm extracted the data from the GPS receiver via the RS232 communication. Microcontroller is used to parse the NMEA data sentences and execute the algorithm. Finally, the output is displayed to a LCD display unit. System testing conducted showed that for a few chosen different locations, geographical view and weather conditions, overall results give an average of 10 % different compared with ideal theoretical calculated results.