Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.

Red Point Positioning Corporation

Renesas Electronics Corporation

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Chunjie Duan

Jinyun Zhang

Zhenzhen Ye

Philip Orlik

Georgiy Pekhteryev

Koon Hoo Teo

ZhenZhen Ye

Rui Ma

Jianlin Guo

Raymond Yim

Serhii Rybalko

Zafer Sahinoglu

Kieran Parsons

William Yerazunis

Yige Wang

Qiuyao Zhu

Frederick J Igo, Jr

Oleg Mitin

Toshiaki Koike-Akino

Ghulam Bhatti

Sinan Gezici

Wei Liu

Da Huang

Mingda Zhou

Qinghe Du

Alexey Liushnia

Xueyan Zhu

Vishwanath Iyer

Rajesh Garg

Nayef Alsindi

Bingnan Wang

Keisuke Kojima

Zhifeng Tao

Toshiyuki Oishi

Man-On Pun

Ramesh Annavajjala

Dirk Brinkman

Giovanni Vannucci

Dan J Burns

Kyeong-Jin Kim

Soichiro Kametani

Yu Zhao

Kazuumi Koguchi

Amitav Mukherjee

Amine Maaref

Atulya Yellepeddi

Yaroslav Zhbankov

Sushmit Goswami

Koike-Akino Toshiaki

Jonathan Horne

Peijie Feng

Yongsen Ma

John Barnwell

Yuyi Wei

Toshiaki Akino

Jay Sun

Keru Xia

Alex Tidwell

Nakayama Masatoshi

Yara Osko

Matt Gross

Antti Korhonen

Dmitry Zvegincev

Weihua Gao

Anton Shpakovskiy

Volodymyr Piasetskyi

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, storing an operator certification value at a first mobile device. A first wireless signal is obtained via a first wireless technology from a reference terminal at a fixed location and a position of the first mobile device is determined according to the first wireless signal and the fixed location. A physical relationship is determined between the first mobile device and a second device attached to equipment and configured with an equipment certification requirement. Responsive to the physical relationship satisfying a threshold value, a comparison of the certification value of the operator and the equipment certification requirement is initiated. An operator-equipment association is generated responsive to a match between the certification value of the operator and the equipment certification requirement, wherein the operator-equipment association facilitates operator access to an operable feature of the equipment. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Wireless, tag-based management of equipment- operator interactions

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, activating one or more anchors in a network of deployed anchors to transmit or receive one or more wireless signals, obtaining range measurements and angle measurements based on the one or more wireless signals, and determining coordinates of anchors in the network based on the range measurements and the angle measurements. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Method and system for self localizing radio devices in a network

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, transmitting, by a first transmitter of a first device, a first wireless signal, wherein the first wireless signal utilizes a first signaling technology, receiving, by a second receiver of the first device, a second wireless signal generated by a second device, wherein the second wireless signal utilizes a second signaling technology that differs from the first signaling technology, and transmitting, by a second transmitter of the first device, a third wireless signal responsive to receiving the second wireless signal, wherein the third wireless signal utilizes the second signaling technology, and wherein the third wireless signal enables the second device to determine location information associated with the first device and the second device. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Method and apparatus for determining relative positioning between devices

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, a method of determining, by a processing system, complete neighbor information for a plurality of radio devices in a wireless network, wherein the complete neighbor information denotes neighboring radio devices; establishing, by the processing system, a backbone list including radio devices that provide beacons, wherein the backbone list includes a first radio device of the plurality of radio devices; determining, by the processing system, a set of radio devices in the plurality of radio devices that are not neighboring radio devices of every radio device in the backbone list; adding, by the processing system, an additional radio device from the plurality of radio devices to the backbone list responsive to an existence of at least one radio device in the set, wherein the additional radio device has at least one neighboring radio device in the backbone list and has at least one neighboring radio device in the set; and repeating, by the processing system, the determining the set step and the adding step until the set is empty. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Method and system to synchronize radio devices in a wireless network

Systems and methods for locating a position of a target object () are provided. The target object can be equipped with a plurality of spatially distributed antennas (), and can be located within a network of a plurality of anchors () at fixed locations. A plurality of anchor pairs () can be assigned. Each anchor pair can include at least two anchors. The anchor pairs can transmit and receive range request, REQ, and range response, RSP, packets (). The REQ and RSP packets can be received by the antennas on the target object (). Distance differences between the target object to the first anchor and from the target object to the second anchor of each anchor pair can be estimated (), based on times at which the REQ packet and the RSP packet are received at the target object. The position of the target object can be estimated based on the distance differences ().

Method and apparatus for determining location of an object

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, determining, according to a location of each of a plurality of devices, an arrangement of coverage areas of devices pairs of the plurality of devices to enable a determination of a mobile device location relative to one or more of the devices pairs within a demarcated area, and identifying a transmission schedule for each of the devices pairs to transmit a wireless signal that initiates a process to determine the mobile device location. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Method and apparatus for configuring devices to enable determination of location information

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, receiving, from a first antenna and a second antenna of a mobile device, a first wireless signal transmitted by a first anchor of a pair of anchors, receiving, from the first antenna and the second antenna, a second wireless signal that is transmitted by a second anchor of the pair of anchors based upon the second anchor detecting the first wireless signal, determining time difference of arrival information based on the receiving the first wireless signal and the second wireless signal, determining angle of arrival information based on the receiving the first wireless signal and the second wireless signal, and estimating a location of the mobile device based on the time difference of arrival information and the angle of arrival information. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Method and system for determining the location of an object based on time difference of arrival (TDOA) and angle of arrival (AOA)

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, selecting, according to selection information wirelessly transmitted from one or more anchors, a particular position estimation mode from among a group of position estimation modes that are each associated with a different radio measurement locating process. One or more radio measurements can be obtained from at least one of the one or more anchors and position information can be determined for the mobile device based on the one or more radio measurements by applying a particular radio measurement locating process of the particular position estimation mode. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Method and system to select a process for estimating the location of a radio device

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, monitoring, by a device, a synchronization signal generated by at least one anchor of a plurality of anchors located in a network, while engaged in a network communications mode. The disclosure further includes detecting an inability to sense the synchronization signal generated by the at least one anchor of the plurality of anchors for a number of frames and configuring the device to transition to peer-to-peer communications. The subject disclosure also addresses monitoring for a presence of the synchronization signal generated by the network of anchors, while engaged in peer-to-peer communications, to determine whether to transition back to a network communications mode. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Method and apparatus for obtaining location information after transitioning between modes of communications

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, utilizing a Radio Frequency (RF) fingerprint model for a demarcated area associated with a plurality of anchors. A machine learning process is applied to an RF training set that includes RF characteristics for a plurality of messages and locations determined for one or more mobile devices within the demarcated area. The plurality of messages are wirelessly transmitted as part of radio measurement locating processes to determine the mobile device locations. A first location for the first mobile device can be determined based on the RF fingerprint model according to particular RF characteristics of first messages being received by or received from the first mobile device. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Method and system to estimate and learn the location of a radio device

Systems and methods for locating a position of a mobile device are provided. The system can include a plurality of anchors. Each anchor can be positioned at a fixed location. The plurality of anchors can be configured to communicate with one another and with the mobile device by transmitting data packets formatted according to a media access control (MAC) frame structure. The MAC frame structure can include a beacon period for synchronizing the plurality of anchors in the system via transmission of a first set of communication packets. The MAC frame structure can include a contention-free period. The MAC frame structure can include a contention period. The system can include a position estimator configured to estimate the position of the mobile device.

Media access control (MAC) frame structure and data communication method in a real-time localization system

Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, obtaining a location of a first mobile tag, responsive to detecting a second mobile tag crossing a threshold relative to the location of the first mobile tag, determining according to an activity associated with the first mobile tag, the second mobile tag, or both whether there is an association event between the first mobile tag and the second mobile tag, and responsive to determining the activity corresponds to the association event, determining whether to associate the first mobile tag and the second mobile tag. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Method and apparatus for associating or disassociating mobile devices

Systems and methods for locating a position of a target object are provided. The target object can be equipped with a plurality of spatially distributed antennas, and can be located within a network of a plurality of anchors at fixed locations. A plurality of anchor pairs can be assigned. Each anchor pair can include at least two anchors. The anchor pairs can transmit and receive range request (REQ) and range response (RSP) packets. The REQ and RSP packets can be received by the antennas on the target object. Distance differences between the target object to the first anchor and from the target object to the second anchor of each anchor pair can be estimated, based on times at which the REQ packet and the RSP packet are received at the target object. The position of the target object can be estimated based on the distance differences.

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Brookline, MA, United States of America

Chunjie Duan