Patent ID: 7263371

Claim:
A method for locating a mobile device in a wireless communications system comprised of a plurality of base stations, comprising: associating the mobile device with a first base station of the plurality of base stations; delivering a paging signal from a subset of base stations associated with the first base station to the mobile device in response to receiving a signal from the first base station; receiving a signal from one of the base stations in the subset of base stations indicating that the mobile device responded to the paging signal from the one base station; and associating the mobile device with the one base station; wherein delivering the paging signal from the subset of base stations associated with the first base station to the mobile device further comprises delivering a signal from the first base station to the subset of base stations requesting that the subset of base stations deliver a paging signal to the mobile device; wherein delivering a signal from the first base station to the subset of base stations requesting that the subset of base stations deliver a paging signal to the mobile device further comprises: receiving a request at the first base station to deliver the paging signal to the mobile device; and identifying at the first base station a plurality of base stations as being contained within the subset of base stations.