Patent ID: 8391889

Claim:
A method performed by one or more computers, comprising: receiving a plurality of sets of location coordinates from one or more mobile devices, each set of location coordinates being associated with a wireless access gateway; determining an effective altitude of the wireless access gateway based on a statistical analysis of the received sets of location coordinates, wherein determining the effective altitude comprises: mapping the sets of location coordinates to a plurality of elevation segments; selecting one or more elevation segments from the plurality of elevation segments based on a concentration of received location coordinates in each of the elevation segments using: a probability density function; and a specified outlier threshold for identifying and excluding one or more outliers in the sets of location coordinates; and determining the effective altitude using sets of location coordinates in the selected one or more elevation segments; and providing the effective altitude to a mobile device for determining an altitude of the mobile device when the mobile device is located within a communication range of the wireless access gateway.