METHOD AND SYSTEM OF LOCATION OF A MOBILE STATON WITHIN A RADIO COVERAGE ZONE OF A CELL AND TO A RADIO CELLULAR NETWORK IMPLEMENTING THIS SYSTEM

• US 20110092218A1
• Filed: 02/06/2009
• Published: 04/21/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 02/08/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Urie, Alistair
• Granted Patent: US 8,515,439 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/450
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 2205/02 Indoor
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 64/00 Locating users or terminals or network equipment for network management purposes, e.g. mobility management

Abstract

The method of location of a mobile station within a radio coverage zone of a cell of a iadlo cellular network, comprises: building (50) a first time sequence indicating during which time intervals the mobile station has been allocated uplink transmission resources, for each remote antenna, building (54) a second time sequence indicating the total power strength of the uplink transmissions simultaneously received by this remote antenna, and correlating the first time sequence and at least one of the second rime sequence, the first and second time sequences being synchronised in time, locating (53) the mobile station from die result of the correlation.

Claims

1. Method of location of a mobile station within a radio coverage zone of a cell of a radio cellular network, die cell comprising a base station having a plurality of distributed remote antennas, each of the remote antenna defining a respective radio coverage zone within the cell, wherein the method comprises:

building (50) a first time sequence indicating during which time intervals the mobile station has been allocated uplink transmission resources to transmit through the cellular network,

for each remote antenna, building (54) a second rime sequence indicating the total power strength of the uplink transmissions simultaneously received by this remote antenna, and

correlating the first time sequence and at least one of the second time sequence, the first and second time sequences being synchronised in time,

locating (58) the mobile station from the result of the correlation.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the mobile station location is obtained by selecting (64) the radio coverage zone defined by the remote antenna for which the second time sequence is the most correlated with the first time sequence.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the mobile station location results from the weighting of die different remote antenna locations with the corresponding correlation results so as to obtain a mobile station location with a resolution strictly smaller than a radio coverage zone of a particular distributed remote antenna.

4. System of location of a mobile station within a radio coverage zone of a cell of a radio cellular network, the cell comprising a base station basing a plurality of distributed remote antennas, each of the remote antenna defining a respective radio coverage zone within the cell, wherein the system comprises:

a uplink allocation monitor (42) able to build a first time sequence indicating during which time intervals the mobile station has been allocated uplink transmission resources to transmit through the cellular network,

for each remote antenna, a uplink power monitor (40) able to build a second time sequence indicating the total power strength of the uplink transmissions simultaneously received by this remote antenna,

a location measurement unit agent (44) able to locate the mobile station from the result of a correlation between the first time sequence and at least one of the second rime sequence, the first and second time sequences being synchronised in rime.

5. Radio cellular network comprising:

a mobile station (36),

a distributed antenna system (7) having a plurality of distributed remote antennas (30-34), each remote antenna defining a radio coverage zone of a radio coverage cell,

a base station (6) defining the radio coverage cell, the base station having at least one transceiver (2) linked to the remote antennas (30-34) through a local network, die transceiver (2) being able to multicast or broadcast data received through the cellular network to the remote antennas, so that the very same data are transmitted ewer the air by the plurality of remote antenna (30-34),

wherein;

the radio cellular network comprises a uplink allocation monitor (42) able to build a first time sequence indicating during which time intervals the mobile station has been allocated uplink transmission resources to transmit through the cellular network,

each remote antenna (30-34) comprises a uplink power monitor (40) able to build a second rime sequence indicating the total power strength of die uplink transmissions simultaneously received by its antenna, and

the network comprises a location measurement unit agent (44) able to locate the mobile station from the result of a correlation between the first rime sequence and at least one of the second time sequence, the first and second time sequences being synchronised in time.