Patent ID: 7995926

Claim:
A method of acquiring alignment between a first terminal and second terminal, said method comprising: identifying a first uncertainty region that the first terminal is positioned within; identifying a second uncertainty region that the second terminal is positioned within; separating the first uncertainty region and the second uncertainty region into a plurality of contiguous scan sections where each scan section is identified by a section code; transmitting a first scan beam from the first terminal that sequentially scans through the scan sections in the second uncertainty region, said first scan beam being encoded with both an outgoing section code for the particular scan section in the second uncertainty region that the first scan beam is scanning and a return section code that identifies the section decoded from the second scan beam if the first terminal was hit; transmitting a second scan beam from the second terminal that sequentially scans through the scan sections in the first uncertainty region, said second scan beam being encoded with both an outgoing section code for the particular scan section in the first uncertainty region that the second scan beam is scanning and a return section code that identifies the section decoded from the first scan beam if the second terminal was hit; receiving the first scan beam by the second terminal when the first scan beam illuminates the section of the second uncertainty region that the second terminal is located; encoding the second scan beam with the section code from the first scan beam received by the second terminal; and receiving the second scan beam by the first terminal when the second scan beam scans the section of the first uncertainty region that the first terminal is located where the second scan beam includes the section code for the second terminal so that the first terminal knows the location of the second terminal in the second uncertainty region.