Patent ID: 8254293

Claim:
A method of estimating physical locations of one or more unknown-location nodes in a network comprising known-location nodes and unknown-location nodes, the method comprising: maintaining in a database known locations of the known-location nodes and estimates of locations of the unknown-location nodes; for each unknown-location node: receiving neighbor node distance estimates; choosing an initial location estimate; computing neighbor node distances between the initial location estimate and neighbor node locations of neighbor nodes; computing a total error from the received neighbor node distance estimates and the computed neighbor node distances; computing a stopping criterion; determining if the stopping criterion satisfies a stopping threshold; while the stopping criterion does not satisfy the stopping threshold: for each unknown-location node: choosing a subsequent location estimate that differs from a previous location estimate; computing updated neighbor node distances between the subsequent location estimate and neighbor node locations of neighbor nodes; computing an updated total error from the received neighbor node distance estimates and the computed neighbor node distances; determining if the stopping criterion satisfies a stopping threshold; and updating in the database the estimate of the locations of the unknown-location nodes if the stopping criterion satisfies the stopping threshold.