Database for Wi-Fi position estimation

• US 9,635,510 B1
• Filed: 06/24/2016
• Issued: 04/25/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 06/24/2016
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Anthentek Innovation, Inc., Athentek Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Athentek Incorporated
• Inventors: Chun-Nan, Chen, Tseng, Ivy H., De Lorenzo, David S.
• Primary Examiner(s): Shedrick, Charles
• Application Number:
  US15/192,635
• Time in Patent Office: 305 Days
• Field of Search: 4554561, 4554566, 370338
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/026 using orientation information, e.g. compass
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/12 WLAN [Wireless Local Area Networks]

Abstract

A database of Wi-Fi access point location data is built from (a) provisioning data; (b) GPS location estimates; and (c) inferred location estimates.

Claims

1. A method for building a Wi-Fi beacon database comprising:

(a) storing surveyed-location estimates and surveyed-location-error estimates for surveyed Wi-Fi beacons in the database;

(b) computing GPS-based-location estimates and GPS-based-location-error estimates for Wi-Fi beacons detected by a wireless device contemporaneously with GPS position estimates for the wireless device, and storing the GPS-based-location estimates and GPS-based-location-error estimates in the database;

(c) computing inferred-position-estimates and inferred-position-error estimates for the wireless device when Wi-Fi beacons are detected without contemporaneous GPS position estimates for the wireless device; and

,

(d) computing inferred-location estimates and inferred-location-error estimates for Wi-Fi beacons detected by the wireless device without contemporaneous GPS position estimates for the wireless device, and storing the inferred-location estimates and inferred-location-error estimates in the database.

2. The method of claim 1 where step (b) comprises forming a weighted average of the GPS position estimates for the wireless device.

3. The method of claim 2 where weighting factors in the weighted average are inversely proportional to estimated error of the GPS position estimates for the wireless device.

4. The method of claim 1 where step (c) comprises the wireless device contemporaneously detecting Wi-Fi beacons having known locations and Wi-Fi beacons having unknown locations.

5. The method of claim 1 where steps (c) and (d) are repeated in a loop until no new inferred position estimates are obtained.

6. The method of claim 1 where steps (c) and (d) are repeated in a loop until a specified maximum number of loop iterations have been performed.

7. The method of claim 1 where steps (c) and (d) are repeated in a loop until an inferred-location-error threshold has been exceeded.