Patent ID: 8265657

Claim:
A method for device discovery in a wireless network, comprising: directionally transmitting a data unit from a transmitting station over a channel in different directions to emulate omni-directional transmission; receiving the data unit transmissions from different directions at a receiving station; determining the quality of the transmissions received from the different directions; detecting location information for the transmitting station relative to the receiving station based on the highest quality transmission among the transmissions received from the different directions, wherein the location information comprises a location vector including N elements corresponding to directional transmissions of a data unit in N different directions, wherein each vector element describes the signal quality of the transmission along a corresponding one of the N directions; a coordinator station transmitting a beacon, wherein N copies of the beacon are directionally transmitted in N different directions; the receiving station measuring and comparing the signal quality for copies of the beacon received from the coordinator station in different directions, to determine a new location vector for the coordinator station; the coordinator station periodically transmitting the beacon in omni-directional emulation mode; and determining a distance between the new location vector and an existing location vector.