Patent ID: 8138976

Claim:
A method for use in a wireless location system, comprising: obtaining field data, wherein said field data have baseline or location dependent values to be used in a signal correlation model; analyzing said field data to obtain (1) said signal correlation model and associated measurement parameters, (2) correlation matrix rules, and (3) a model for a priori position; computing weights for the measurements based on an estimated variability of the measurement; using the weights along with the correlation matrix rules to generate a covariance matrix, and computing an inverse covariance matrix; performing an iterative search over a geographical region to find a location with a maximum a posteriori (MAP) metric; determining that a stopping condition has been reached; and reporting the geographic position with the largest MAP metric; wherein said iterative search includes a resolution loop in which a geographic search space resolution is reduced in each iteration and new test points are generated via interpolation, and wherein said iterative search includes a MAP metric computation that uses the covariance matrix, an error model and a measurement parameter table.