Patent ID: 7933610

Claim:
A method of geo-locating a mobile station in a geographic area serviced by a plurality of base station sites co-located with location measurement units (LMUs), the method comprising: selecting a reference position within a communication coverage area of a first site; selecting at least one secondary site according to a function of the reference position; selecting at least one secondary sector of the at least one selected secondary site to task based on a function of the reference position; and, tasking the at least one secondary sector to obtain location information of the mobile station; further comprising: calculating a cost function to determine which secondary site has the minimum total cost, and flagging that site as no longer considered an available candidate site, wherein the cost function is: COST=W(DMS_BS F)+[BL−BMS_BS]; where W is a weighting factor that controls the relative cost between distance and bearing costs, DMS_BS is the distance from the mobile station reference position to the base station in kilometers, F is an exponent representing the distance cost penalty for a distance inside a cutoff radius measured from the MS reference position, BL is a look direction bearing angle, and BMS_BS is a bearing angle measured from the mobile station to the base station.