Power cycling for a global positioning system

A method of conserving power in a handheld global positioning system (GPS) locator device comprising:

• activating a GPS receiver to obtain a position fix for an associated device according to a predefined power cycling routine;
• receiving a portion of a subframe of almanac data for the GPS receiver while the GPS receiver is active;
• identifying at least one block of stored almanac data associated with the recieved portion of a subframe;
• and
• adjusting the power cycling routine of the GPS receiver according to an associated status of the identified block of stored almanac data, the status indicating the length of time for which the block of almanac data is expected to be useful.

A handheld communications system, comprising:

• a radio frequency (RF) transceiver operative to communicate with other handheld communication systems through a mobile base station;
• a memory that stores a plurality of quanta of almanac data as associated memory blocks, each memory block having an associated status indicating the length of time for which the associated almanac data is expected to be useful, the mobile base station periodically providing updates to the associated memory blocks via an RF transmission;
• and
• a power management component that operates to switch the transceiver between at least a first mode, in which the transceiver is actively receiving data, and a second mode, in which the transceiver does not actively receive data according to a power cycling routine of the transceiver.

A method of conserving power in a handheld communications system that comprises a global positioning system (GPS) receiver, comprising:

• activating an associated receiver according to a predefined power cycling routine to receive desired data from a mobile base station;
• receiving at least a portion of a quantum of almanac data along with the desired data during communication with the mobile base station;
• identifying at least one block of stored almanac data associated with the received at least a portion of a quantum;
• and
• adjusting the power cycling routine of the receiver according to an associated status of the identified block of stored almanac data, the status indicating the length of time for which the block of almanac data is expected to be useful.