Telecommunication Systems, Inc.

Joseph Hannan

Gordon John Hines

Paul Thompson

William Wells

Kambiz Ghozati

Myron D'Souza

Joel Groen

Lynne Seitz

David Bartnik

Mark Titus

A practical inter-carrier roaming solution by way of a roaming location protocol (RLP) router that provides consistent location support across heterogeneous wireless network standards. The RLP router maintains connectivity to each location server in a roaming ecosystem, alleviating the need for an expensive and impractical mesh network of location servers. When a home location server (H-LS) determines it cannot locate a subscriber device because the subscriber device is roaming, the H-LS sends an RLP request to the RLP router. The RLP router then routes the RLP request to a serving location server (S-LS), which subsequently returns location information for the roaming subscriber device. The RLP router maintains mobile switching center ID (MSCID) to location based services (LBS) mappings for routing RLP requests. The RLP router may also maintain rough MSC-level positioning data for each MSCID to enable the RLP router to resolve certain location fixes without utilizing an S-LS.

RLP router

A method and apparatus for steering location requests to a serving one of a plurality of possible location positioning devices. A location request may be steered base on an emergency status of the location request, whether or not the subscriber device has a valid data plan established, based on the device type of the wireless device, or based on the type of application running on the wireless device. A location request may also be steered to a fallback location device if a steering to a primary selected location device fails and sufficient time remains to locate via the fallback location device.

Location services gateway server

LBS support to CDMA mobiles while roaming on another network. IS-801 session data is routed by a routing gateway to a correct visited network PDE that contains correct BSA data, which is used to return assistance data to an interrogating mobile device. A standalone exemplary roaming LBS routing gateway (XRG) provides network connectivity between PDE equipment in multiple carrier networks. Conventional LBS roaming support is defined via the use of Mobile Position Centers (MPCs). The invention implements a roaming LBS gateway to enable roaming between CDMA carriers that are only using a PDE (Positioning Determining Entity) for this purpose, since a mobile position center (MPC) is typically an optional network node according to location based services (LBS) specifications.

Roaming gateway enabling location based services (LBS) roaming for user plane in CDMA networks without requiring use of a mobile positioning center (MPC)

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Snoqualmie, WA, United States of America

Joseph Hannan