Method and apparatus for providing satellite assistance data

摘要

Disclosed is a method for providing satellite assistance data to facilitate determination of the location of a mobile station, particularly for instance a mobile station served by a femtocell. When a positioning server receives a request for the location of a mobile station, the positioning server will determine from the request the mobile station is served by a femtocell and that the positioning server should query a femtocell server for seed data, or the positioning server may otherwise determine from the request that the positioning server should query the femtocell server for seed data. The seed data would preferably be geographic coordinates of a femtocell with which the mobile station is registered. The positioning server may then use that seed data to facilitate obtaining satellite assistance data from a base station almanac, and the positioning serve may provide the satellite assistance data to the mobile station to facilitate location determination.

主权项

1. A method for providing satellite assistance data to facilitate determining location of a mobile station served by a femtocell system, the femtocell system including one or more femtocells and a femtocell server, wherein each of the one or more femtocells is at respective geographic coordinates and those geographic coordinates are registered with the femtocell server as geographic coordinates of the femtocell, and wherein the mobile station is currently registered with the femtocell server as being within coverage of a given one of the one or more femtocells, the method comprising:
a positioning server receiving a request to determine the location of the mobile station, the request containing an indication that the mobile station is being served by the femtocell system, wherein the indication that the mobile station is being served by the femtocell system is a particular mobile positioning capabilities (MPCAP) value; responsive to the indication that the mobile station is being served by the femtocell system, the positioning server querying the femtocell server to obtain the registered geographic coordinates of the femtocell in whose coverage the mobile station is currently registered with the femtocell server; the positioning server using the obtained geographic coordinates as a key to dip into almanac data so as to obtain satellite assistance data for satellites over the obtained geographic coordinates; and the positioning server providing the obtained satellite assistance data to the mobile station to enable the mobile station to obtain satellite signal information usable to determine the location of the mobile station.