Patent ID: 8280398

Claim:
A positioning system for detecting the position of a mobile terminal, comprising: an illumination device configured to transmit a signal including a unique information from a given installation position; a mobile terminal communicably connected to the illumination device and configured to extract the unique information from the signal transmitted from the illumination device; and a position estimation device communicably connected to the mobile terminal and receiving the unique information from the terminal, the position estimation device being configured to estimate a position of the mobile terminal based on an illumination installation position information and the unique information received by the mobile terminal, said illumination installation position information including the unique information and a position coordinate information indicating the installation position of the illumination device in association with each other, wherein the position estimation device is configured to: read out from the illumination installation position information the position coordinate information corresponding to the unique information based on one or more unique information, which uniquely identifies the illumination device extracted by the mobile terminal within a past predetermined time period; estimate the position of the mobile terminal based on the read out position information, add a weighting value to one or more unique information received by the mobile terminal within a past predetermined time based on the reception time of the respective unique information; and estimate the position of the mobile terminal based on unique information selected based on a result of the addition; and wherein the position estimation device is configured to estimate the position of the terminal based on most frequently received unique information among one or more unique information received by the terminal within a past predetermined time period.