Patent ID: 8824242

Claim:
A method to calculate a distance between a portable audio collecting device and a reference audio collecting device, comprising: receiving, at the reference audio collecting device, a first radio frequency (RF) signal from the portable audio collecting device to cause the reference audio collecting device to begin storing a plurality of reference data samples, each of the reference data samples associated with an indication of a respective time of acquisition; receiving, at the reference audio collecting device, a second RF signal containing a plurality of embedded portable data samples of ambient audio collected at the portable audio collecting device, the embedded portable data samples being offset from the reference data samples by a dwell period, the dwell period to prevent collection and storage of portable data samples at the portable audio collecting device that are lacking an overlap parity with the reference data samples collected at the reference audio collecting device, wherein each of the portable data samples is associated with an indication of a respective time of acquisition; selecting a set of the portable data samples having a highest relative correlation value to a set of reference data samples; subtracting the indication of times of respective pairs of the selected sets of samples to form a difference value; and calculating a distance between the portable audio device and the reference audio collecting device based on the difference value.