System, method and apparatus for integrated local area locationing, tracking and communications

摘要

The present invention is an integrated wireless system with multiple functionalities including robust (indoor/outdoor) position location, mobile receiver tracking and adaptive broadband communication. The present invention may be an adaptive position location system for local and indoor applications with improved accuracy, flexibility and security. The self-calibration technique of the present invention may cause, the position location system to be easily deployed. A master station may communicate with and control two or more slave stations and one or more user devices and thereby determine the position of a user device and track that user device, utilizing location reference sets, in accordance with the location of the master station and communication between the slave stations and the master station. The locationing operation of the present invention may be initiated by the user device.

主权项

1. A system operable to provide adaptive position location with adjustable duty cycle for position location and different requirements in an integrated wireless network for one or more user devices, said system comprising:
(a) an integrated wireless network, comprising:
(i) a master station;(ii) two or more slave stations with initially unknown relative positions with respect to the master station, said two or more slave stations being located by the master station before use of the two or more slave stations as known location references in accordance with one or more cooperative signal processing techniques, and said master station and the two or more slave stations being chosen as location reference sets during network setting up and initialization stage with the relative reference node positions of the slave stations determined by communication with the master station; and(iii) one or more user devices to be located using the location reference sets in (ii) during the position location stage (b) an integrated adaptive communications link between the one or more user devices and the location reference sets that include the master station and the two or more slave stations and between the two or more slave stations and the master station, said integrated adaptive communications link being operable to support adaptive two-way interaction between all reference nodes and the one or more user devices under the adaptive coordination of the master station for system setting up, adaptation, self-calibration and position location; and whereby the one or more user devices are relatively locatable and trackable by one or more locationing techniques based on the location reference sets, utilizing the location of the master station and communication over the integrated adaptive communications link between the master station and the two or more slave stations.