Patent ID: 7739000

Claim:
A method for responding to the presence of a vehicle comprising the step of: operating a wireless vehicular sensor network ( 1600 ) comprising the steps of: operating at least one wireless vehicular sensor node ( 500 ) responding to said presence of said vehicle ( 6 ) in said wireless vehicular sensor network, comprising the steps of: using a vehicle sensor state ( 104 ) from a vehicular sensor ( 2 ) to create a vehicular sensor waveform ( 106 ) based upon said presence of said vehicle by updating a vehicle sensor state queue with said vehicle sensor state, deriving said vehicular sensor waveform from said vehicle sensor state queue, determining a change-in-presence of said vehicle based upon said vehicle sensor state queue, and updating a waveform queue with a waveform characteristic when said change-in-presence is indicated; generating a report ( 130 ) including at least two waveform characteristic ( 120 ) of at least two of said vehicular sensor waveform by assembling said report from said waveform queue, and indicating report members of said waveform queue; and operating a transmitter ( 22 ) in a transceiver ( 20 ) to send said report across at least one wireless physical transport ( 1510 ) to an access point ( 1500 ) included said wireless vehicular sensor network, to approximate said vehicular sensor waveform at said access point; and operating said access point, comprising the steps: operating a receiver in a second transceiver ( 1020 ) to receive said report; and deriving a vehicle velocity estimate ( 1054 ) for at least one of said vehicle from said report.