Patent ID: 7203503

Claim:
A method of locating mobile stations within a mobile communication network including a plurality of mobile stations and a plurality of base stations, the method comprising the steps of: performing measurements on signals communicated between at least three base stations and at least two mobile stations; and locating the at least two mobile stations simultaneously using a number of equations, wherein the number of equations is (nm*nb+nm) if a round trip time (RTT), to transmit a signal from one base station to a mobile station and receive the transmitted signal back from the mobile station is known for at least two mobile stations, or the number of equations is (nm*nb) if the (RTT) for the one base station is not known for the at least two mobile stations, wherein nm is a number of mobile stations to be located and nb is a number of base stations involved in locating the nm mobile stations, and wherein each equation comprises the location of a mobile station as a function of the location of a base station and the performed signal measurements.