Patent ID: 8855676

Claim:
A method for providing satellite assistance data to facilitate determining location of a mobile station served by a femtocell system, the femtocell system including one or more femtocells and a femtocell server, wherein each of the one or more femtocells is at respective geographic coordinates and those geographic coordinates are registered with the femtocell server as geographic coordinates of the femtocell, and wherein the mobile station is currently registered with the femtocell server as being within coverage of a given one of the one or more femtocells, the method comprising: a positioning server receiving a request to determine the location of the mobile station, the request containing an indication that the mobile station is being served by the femtocell system, wherein the indication that the mobile station is being served by the femtocell system is a particular mobile positioning capabilities (MPCAP) value; responsive to the indication that the mobile station is being served by the femtocell system, the positioning server querying the femtocell server to obtain the registered geographic coordinates of the femtocell in whose coverage the mobile station is currently registered with the femtocell server; the positioning server using the obtained geographic coordinates as a key to dip into almanac data so as to obtain satellite assistance data for satellites over the obtained geographic coordinates; and the positioning server providing the obtained satellite assistance data to the mobile station to enable the mobile station to obtain satellite signal information usable to determine the location of the mobile station.