Patent ID: 7260408

Claim:
A wireless network system facilitating the location of wireless nodes, comprising: a plurality of access elements for wireless communication with at least one remote client element and for communication with a central control element; wherein the access elements are each operative to: establish and maintain, in connection with a central control element, wireless connections with remote client elements; detect the strength of received signals corresponding to frames received from wireless nodes; append signal strength values to the frames received from the wireless nodes; and transmit the received frames to a central control element; wherein at least one of the access elements comprises a plurality of directional antennas, and is further operative to: select one from the plurality of the directional antennas to receive the frames in received signals; append an identifier corresponding to the selected antenna to the frames received from the wireless nodes; at least one central control element for supervising the access elements, wherein the central control element is operative to: manage wireless connections between the access elements and corresponding remote client elements, and store signal strength data appended to the frames transmitted by the plurality of access elements in association with wireless node identifiers; and a wireless node location module operative to: compute the estimated location of a wireless node based on the antennas identified by at least one of the access elements, and the signal strength values appended to the frames transmitted by the wireless node as detected by the access elements.