Simplified low-cost GPS-based tracking system for soccer practice

One of the main problem in the failure of football team is the lack of professional coach. Especially, in the rural area, there is no coach to help improve the team performance by designing the training course for the football player, planning the tactic during the game or choosing the football player who has higher performance. This paper proposes a football player tracking system (FPTS) based on GPS. Here, a simplified low-cost GPS module is used to detect the position of the football player during the game. FPTS can calculate the speed at that time, show the distance that football player can run and display the route that football player are passed by using the position that are sent from the GPS module. The FPTS is divided into two parts. First, a mobile part on the wrist-pad is used to detect the position and send the data through the Xbee. Second, the ground part is used to process the data from the mobile part, calculate and display the speed, distance, route of football player and save the data into the database. The FPTS will help the football team in rural area which does not have the coach by sending the all of data recorded to the coach. The coach will analyze the data and help the football team to design the training course to improve the performance of each player, plan the tactic of the game and choose the player in the right position. The FPTS is a low-cost system for tracking football player. It can be applied to any sport field that have a square shape.