Patent ID: 7822551

Claim:
A system, comprising: at least one asset tracking device, the asset tracking device including a communications module, a processing and storage module coupled to the communications module, and a location module coupled to the processing and storage module; a network access point, wirelessly coupled to the at least one asset tracking device; and a local positioning system comprising a plurality of reference tags, each of the reference tags having its known position coordinates stored therein, the reference tags wirelessly coupled to receive signals transmitted from the at least one asset tracking device, and to transmit signals to the at least one asset tracking device; wherein the at least one asset tracking device is operable to determine that its location module is unable to determine position coordinates from GPS signals, is further operable to search for one or more reference tags of the local positioning system, to communicate with the local positioning system so as to gather the information necessary to compute its position coordinates; and wherein the at least one asset tracking device is an RFID tag attached to an item to be tracked; and wherein one of the reference tags includes an imaging component configured to capture an earthbound image of the sky for calculating its position coordinates.