Patent ID: 8364168
Filing Date: 2013-01-29
Classification: H04W

Abstract:
1. A method for computing a geographical location of a mobile terminal in a cellular telecommunications network that comprises a plurality of cells, each cell being identified by a cell identifier and associated with a plurality of adjacent cells, the method comprising: a) collecting the cell identifier and a received signal value of each of a cell serving said mobile terminal and a predetermined number of cells adjacent to said cell serving said mobile terminal, said collected cell identifiers defining identifiers of possible serving cells for the mobile terminal, b) selecting, from a first database that comprises a plurality of entries including a respective entry for each geographical location of a plurality of geographical locations in an area that associates geographical coordinates for the geographical location with the cell identifier and a corresponding expected received signal value for, each of an expected serving cell and a plurality of expected adjacent cells for the geographical location, each entry for which the cell identifier of the expected serving cell matches any of said identifiers of possible serving cells for'the mobile terminal, c) comparing, for each entry selected from the first database, each pair of a cell identifier and a corresponding expected received signal value for the geographical location with each pair of a cell identifier and a, corresponding received signal value of each possible serving cell for the mobile terminal to determine each entry of the first database that has a number of pairs matching with the possible serving cells that is greater than a predetermined match threshold, and d) processing said geographical coordinates of each determined entry for which the number of pairs matching with the possible serving cells is greater than the predetermined match threshold to obtain the geographical location of said mobile terminal, wherein collecting the cell identifiers and the received signal values of the predetermined number of cells adjacent to said cell serving said mobile terminal comprises: a1) collecting a plurality of data representative of radio base stations of the plurality of adjacent cells associated with said cell serving said mobile terminal and corresponding actual received signal values for the plurality of adjacent cells associated with said cell serving said mobile terminal, a2) selecting a set of data from the collected plurality data representative of said predetermined number of cells adjacent to said cell serving cell for the mobile terminal and the corresponding actual received signal values for said predetermined number of cells adjacent to said cell serving said mobile terminal a3) retrieving, from a second database, cell identifiers associated with said cell serving said mobile terminal and the selected set of data for the predetermined number of cells adjacent to said cell serving said mobile terminal; and wherein said mobile terminal receives said plurality of data and the corresponding actual received signal values for said predetermined number of cells adjacent to said cell serving said mobile terminal, and transmits said plurality of data and said corresponding actual received signal values to a remote server, and wherein selection of the set of data and retrieval of the cell identifiers associated with said cell serving said mobile terminal and the selected set of data from the second database is carried out in said remote server.