METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR LOCATING A WIRELESS LOCAL AREA NETWORK IN A WIDE AREA NETWORK

• US 20140307715A1
• Filed: 06/26/2014
• Published: 10/16/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 07/25/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Qualcomm, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Qualcomm, Inc.
• Inventors: Nanda, Sanjiv, Gogic, Aleksandar, Deshpande, Manoj M., Jain, Nikhil
• Granted Patent: US 9,060,380 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/332
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 48/16 Discovering, processing access restriction or access information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 64/00 Locating users or terminals or network equipment for network management purposes, e.g. mobility management
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/06 adapted for operation in multiple networks or having at least two operational modes, e.g. multi-mode terminals

Abstract

The disclosure is directed to a mobile communication device that measures characteristics or attributes of a first communications network that vary according to physical location within that first communications network to create a fingerprint, or signature, of a location within the first communications network. When the fingerprint of the current location of the mobile device is created it can be compared to a known fingerprint associated with a second communication network to determine the mobile device'"'"'s proximity to the second communications network. For example, the first communications network may be a CDMA wide area wireless communication network and the second communications network may be a 802.11 wireless LAN.

Claims

1. A method of wireless communications, comprising:

capturing a value of at least one attribute of at least one reference signal transmitted by a wide area network when a wireless communications device is in the vicinity of a wireless local area network of a plurality of wireless local area networks;

creating a signal attribute pattern for at least one wireless local area network of the plurality of wireless local area networks based on the captured value of the at least one attribute;

determining whether the wireless communications device is currently in the vicinity of one of the wireless local area networks by comparing a current value of the at least one attribute from one or more reference signals received from the wide area network to the value of the at least one attribute in the signal attribute pattern stored in a memory.