Patent ID: 8755331

Claim:
A method to determine the physical location of a mobile wireless device, the method comprising the steps of: a computer receiving 1-hop neighbor information from a mobile wireless device, wherein the 1-hop neighbor information comprises the identities of one or more wireless neighbors of the mobile wireless device responding to a discovery request transmitted by the mobile wireless device in an ad hoc wireless communications protocol; the computer receiving 2-hop neighbor information from each of the one or more responding 1-hop wireless neighbors of the mobile wireless device, wherein the 2-hop neighbor information comprises the identities of one or more wireless second-hop neighbors associated with each of the one or more responding 1-hop wireless neighbors of the mobile wireless device; the computer determining a physical location of the mobile wireless device based in part on: fixed physical locations of wireless devices stored in a database that correspond to the one or more wireless devices responding to the discovery request transmitted by the mobile wireless device; and an area in which the mobile wireless device is in a transmission range of each of the one or more 1-hop wireless neighbors of the mobile wireless device responding to the discovery request that are associated with a fixed physical location; and an area in which the mobile wireless device is in a transmission range of each of the one or more responding 1-hop wireless neighbors of the mobile wireless device that are not associated with a fixed physical location, where each of the responding 1-hop neighbors not associated with a fixed physical location is in the transmission range of its associated second-hop wireless neighbors that are associated with fixed physical locations.