Patent ID: 8116783

Claim:
A method of determining a location of a wireless client device on a wireless network, the method comprising the steps of: determining whether a data rate of transmission of the wireless client device is sufficiently high to determine the location of the wireless client device on the wireless network with sufficient speed and accuracy; and if the data rate of transmission of the wireless client device is not sufficiently high, determining how frequently to send a PING message to the wireless client device to cause the wireless client device to transmit data in response to receipt of the PING message to cause the data rate of transmission of the wireless client device to be increased to enable the location of the wireless client device to be determined with sufficient speed and accuracy; wherein the step of determining how frequently to PING the wireless client device comprises adjusting how frequently a PING message is sent to the wireless client device; wherein the step of determining how frequently to PING the wireless client device causes a rate at which the wireless client device is PINGed to be set at a level where a total data rate from the client is at least as much as a pre-measured statistical data rate required to enable the location of the wireless client device to be determined in a current approximate location of the wireless client device; and wherein the step of determining how frequently to PING the wireless client device is done adaptively in real time based on current location data track error estimates determined from known path obstacles within an area encompassing the current approximate location and generalized data on total data rate versus location determination rate.