Location of wireless mobile terminals

Abstract

Methods, systems, processor-readable media, and devices for collecting information pertaining to the configuration of one or more wireless networks and using this information in turn to estimate the location of mobile wireless devices associated with those networks are disclosed. Also disclosed are methods, systems, processor-readable media, and devices for discovering and/or maintaining wireless transmitter characteristics corresponding to one or more wireless networks. Also disclosed are methods, systems, processor-readable media, and devices for aggregating wireless network transmitter characteristics from a plurality of wireless network transmitters. The present disclosure can be used across multiple networks, without requiring information from the operators of those networks, in which the information concerning those networks is collected and maintained in a current state efficiently and with rapid response to changes in the network configuration.

Description

FIELDCertain embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to providing systems, methods and devices for collecting information pertaining to the configuration of one or more wireless networks and using this information in turn to estimate the location of mobile wireless devices associated with those networks.BACKGROUNDThe use of location information has been considered in mobile services for many years. After a period of hype, so-called location based services (LBS) suffered a downturn for a combination of reasons. One was that the some of the technologies developed to achieve high accuracy turned out to be too expensive to deploy or too much of an operational burden to maintain. Another problem was that the new technologies required new handsets which created a problem launching the services. Another problem was that the value chain was too complex.Location information for a wireless device can be obtained from at least two sources. One source is via a global positioning syst...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

Certain embodiments, disclosed computer-implemented methods of determining a location of a radio terminal comprising the steps of obtaining an initial location estimate of a radio terminal; communicating the initial location estimate to a server; receiving a tile including a plurality of characteristics of wireless network transmitters near the initial location estimate of the radio terminal; measuring one or more radio network parameters from at least one wireless network transmitter; applying a cost function to the one or more measurements and one or more characteristics from the tile corresponding to the at least one wireless network transmitter; and minimizing a sum of costs generated by the cost function to calculate the location of the mobile radio terminal. Certain embodiments, disclose methods wherein the one or more characteristics are parameters describing the reception footprint of the at least one wireless transmitter. In certain aspects, the one or more characteristics comprise a mean and a covariance of a 2D Gaussian probability density function approximating the coverage footprint of the at least one wireless transmitter.

Certain embodiments, disclose methods of determining a location of a mobile radio terminal comprising the steps of: receiving a report from a mobile radio terminal, wherein the report includes at least one measurement of at least one radio parameter corresponding to a first wireless network t...

Problems solved by technology

One was that the some of the technologies developed to achieve high accuracy turned out to be too expensive to deploy or too much of an operational burden to maintain.

Another problem was that the new technologies required new handsets which created a problem launching the services.

Another problem was that the value chain was too complex.

However, GPS has a number of limiting factors.

For example, GPS is only available in a limited number of cellular handsets, thereby limiting its availability.

Further, GPS typically performs poorly indoors due to the reliance on line of sight for satellite fixes.

Additionally, GPS has a high latency which can frustrate some users who don't want to wait for a GPS lock.

In the past some attempts have been made to collect this information in order to make cellular based location publically accessible however none of these achieved sufficient coverage or quality to support high quality services.

In the emerging Mobile Web 2.0 services ecosystem this represents a significant impediment because fewer and fewer applications can be viable if operated only with a single MNO or on a small number of devices.

Additionally the emerging mobile Internet ecosystem enabled by recent advances in device UI capabilities, wireless connections speeds and availability of content for mobile consumption is being held back because the majority of the independent software vendors and content providers cannot afford to negotiate individual deals with all the carriers to make location information available.

Application developers seeking to use location information across multiple networks face another challenge even where operators do make location information available.

The differences between the location technologies used by the different operators make it difficult to abstract across the different networks to obtain a consistent level of functionality and performance.

Another challenge for the platform is the continual evolution of the wireless networks as operators optimize the networks and add capacity.

Differences between countries also mean that services whi...

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