Patent ID: 8144673

Claim:
A device for estimating the position of itself in response to gathering wireless signal information from WLAN access points (APs), said device comprising: a receive-only WLAN radio receiver configured only for receiving WLAN signals transmitted by WLAN APs in range of said device; extraction logic for extracting only header information from said received WLAN signals to identify the WLAN APs; and logic to cooperate with a WLAN-based positioning system to estimate the position of the device based at least in part on the extracted header information identifying the WLAN APs in the range of said device; wherein said device does not comprise a transmitter for transmitting WLAN signals and is incapable of transmitting WLAN signals; wherein the receive-only WLAN radio receiver is configured to be enabled only to receive the WLAN signals transmitted by WLAN APs in range of the device and is configured to be disabled to minimize power consumption otherwise.