Patent ID: 7856209

Claim:
A method of estimating a location of a wireless device, the method comprising: disposing a plurality of sniffers in a geographic region; receiving a plurality of wireless signals using one or more of the plurality of sniffers; processing the plurality of wireless signals to identify a subset of the plurality of wireless signals that are associated with the wireless device; determining a plurality of received signal strengths associated with the subset of the plurality of wireless signals; and providing an estimation of the location of the wireless device utilizing the determined received signal strengths associated with the subset of the plurality of wireless signals, wherein the processing the plurality of wireless signals comprises: obtaining a first frame from the plurality of wireless signals; identifying a first wireless device by estimating a first starting time for the first wireless device utilizing a first TSF value included in the first frame; obtaining a second frame from the plurality of wireless signals; identifying a second wireless device by estimating a second starting time for the second wireless device utilizing a second TSF value included in the second frame, wherein the first TSF value and the second TSF value are different; and identifying a subset of the plurality of wireless signals associated with either the first or the second wireless device.