Patent ID: 8723729

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: a plurality of antennae to receive a signal transmitted from at least one additional apparatus; a switching mechanism to dwell on each of the plurality of antennae for a respective period of time and to generate a multi-antenna signal there from; a front-end circuitry, coupled to the switching mechanism, to generate a digital signal based on the multi-antenna signal; a processing circuitry, coupled to the front-end circuitry, to process the digital signal, in accordance with at least one operational mode, selected from a plurality of operational modes based on at least one characteristic of the signal, to generate at least one of an estimate of an angle of arrival corresponding to the signal transmitted from at least one additional apparatus and a range estimate corresponding to a distance between the apparatus and the at least one additional apparatus; and an operational mode selection circuitry adaptively to direct operation of the front-end circuitry and the processing circuitry in accordance with a first of the plurality of operational modes and a second of the plurality of operational modes; and wherein: the first of the plurality of operational modes corresponding to the signal including predetermined contents; and the second of the plurality of operational modes corresponding to the signal including unknown contents.