Patent Document ID: 9380424
Application ID: 13828394
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of estimating a distance to a wireless access point in an indoor environment using a crowdsourced signal propagation model, comprising: receiving, at a server, a first received signal strength (RSS) value based on a first signal received at a first device from a wireless access point in the indoor environment; estimating at the server, based on a predetermined characteristic of the indoor environment, that the received first signal originated from a first distance from the first device; estimating, at the server, a signal propagation characteristic based on the first signal strength and the estimated first distance; receiving, at the server, a plurality of signal samples from a plurality of devices via a network, the signal samples originating from the wireless access point; creating, at the server, a crowdsourced signal propagation model for the indoor environment based on the signal propagation characteristic and the plurality of signal samples including determining a closest match between the plurality of signal samples and one of a plurality of distribution curves, each of the plurality of distribution curves illustrating estimated frequencies of occurrence of different received signal strengths corresponding to different values used with a path loss equation; and estimating a distance to any wireless access point in the indoor environment based on the crowdsourced signal propagation model.