Patent ID: 7916661

Claim:
A method of characterizing at least one WLAN access point, using the coverage area of the WLAN access point, so that the characterization may be used later to effectively weigh signals transmitted by said WLAN access point when performing a location estimation, the method of characterization comprising: determining the geographic location of the at least one WLAN access point; for each WLAN access point, measuring a plurality of power values for signals transmitted by the corresponding WLAN access point, each power value being measured at a position relative to each corresponding WLAN access point; determining a signal coverage area of each WLAN access point based on said measured plurality of power values; dividing the signal coverage area of the WLAN access point into at least one section; determining radio propagation characteristics for each section; and assigning a weight to each section based on the coverage areas of the WLAN access points, where sections having relatively small coverage areas are assigned a higher effective weight than sections having relatively large coverage areas, so that the location estimation can bias its estimate of position to rely on signals detected from the WLAN access points with relatively smaller coverage areas.