Patent ID: 7532896

Claim:
In a wireless node location mechanism comprising a plurality of radio transceivers operative to detect the signal strength of signals transmitted by wireless nodes, a method comprising detecting, at one or more of the plurality of radio transceivers, the signal strength of radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted by a wireless node, wherein at least one of the radio transceivers of the plurality of radio transceivers comprises a plurality of directional antennas, the plurality of directional antennas having substantially non-overlapping patterns relative to each other to achieve sectorization of a region in which the at least one of the radio transceivers is deployed, wherein, for the at least one radio transceiver, peak gains of the plurality of directional antennas are oriented radially and outwardly about an axis and offset relative to each other at an angle substantially equal to 360/N, where N is the number of directional antennas in the plurality of directional antennas; identifying the directional antennas associated with the detected signal strengths to be used in locating the wireless node; accessing RF coverage maps corresponding to the plurality of radio transceivers, wherein, as to the at least one radio transceiver comprising a plurality of directional antennas, a unique RF coverage map corresponding to both the radio transceiver and the identified directional antenna is accessed, wherein each of the RF coverage maps is substantially coextensive with antenna patterns of the corresponding antennas of the radio transceivers out to a threshold signal strength level; and computing the estimated location of the wireless node based on the accessed coverage maps and the signal strengths of the RF signals detected by the infrastructure radios, and wherein computing the estimated location of the wireless node is further based on a determined positional overlap between the accessed RF coverage maps associated with the antennas selected to locate the wireless node.