System and method for determining location of a device in a wireless communication network

• US 20040259571A1
• Filed: 06/07/2004
• Published: 12/23/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 06/05/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Strong Force IoT Portfolio 2016, LLC (Strong Force Intellectual Capital, LLC)
• Original Assignee: MeshNetworks, Inc. (Motorola Solutions, Inc.)
• Inventors: Joshi, Avinash
• Granted Patent: US 7,215,966 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/456.1
• 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 84/18 Self-organising networks, e.g. ad-hoc networks or sensor networks

Abstract

A system and method for message exchanges in a wireless communication network which minimize network overhead and offers fast determination of Coordinates of a device. A system and method controls a node to exchange small, structured messages with one or more reference nodes requesting the Coordinates of the reference node, which are then used in a periodic evaluation of time of flight messages from that reference node for determination of Coordinates of the node.

Claims

1. A method for enabling a node in an ad-hoc multi-hopping peer-to-peer wireless communication network to determine its location coordinates, based on the location coordinates of at least one reference node , the method comprising:

controlling the node to request at least one reference node to provide location coordinates upon the node receiving at least one of a hello message, routing message, neighbor advertisement and short hello message from the said at least one reference node and, in response, controlling said at least one reference node to provide the location coordinates;

controlling the node to periodically evaluate time of flight messages received at the node from the at least one reference node; and

controlling the node to estimate its own location coordinates based on the information pertaining to the location coordinates of the said at least one reference node and the evaluation of the time of flight messages.

2. A method as claimed in claim 1, wherein:

the request is at least one of a location request message and routing message; and

the reply is at least one of a location reply message and routing message

3. A method as claimed in claim 1, wherein:

the node is a mobile node.