A method for transmitting information of a mobile station through a wireless local area network (WLAN) is provided. The WLAN includes a plurality of access points and a plurality of mobile stations, and is coupled to a management server. One mobile station communicates with one of the access points by management frames, and the access point communicates with the management server by packets. The method includes the steps of: adding an information element (IE) for storing information of the mobil...

A WLAN communication system (10) and method employs mobile WLAN base stations (16) that include WLAN transceivers (26) and memory (30) for storing received messages from one or more mobile WLAN devices (12a-12n). The mobile WLAN base stations (16) serve as moving message carriers or message repeaters of messages for the mobile WLAN devices. In one embodiment, a mobile WLAN base station (16) receives messages transmitted by several mobile WLAN devices (12a-12n), temporarily stores the received me...

By introducing a hierarchical encryption scheme and the use of asymmetric cryptography, the critical information in message exchanges is concealed from unauthorized entities. This helps greatly in preventing man-in-the-middle attacks faced by inter-working. In addition, access control is conducted by introducing a network structure having a rule interpreter that is capable of mapping general rules to WLAN specific commands. It obviates the needs for mobile user's home network to understand infor...

Methods, apparatuses, and systems directed to processing location and network data in a wireless network. According to one implementation of the present invention, a location server functions both as a middleware data collection engine and a calculation engine in a hierarchical WLAN system. In one implementation, the location server collects network data associated with mobile nodes. As described in further detail below, mobile nodes may include one or more of wireless mobile stations (e.g., wir...

Apparatuses and methods for implementing the GPS positioning functionalities in devices that are capable of communicating using IP packets are disclosed. The aiding-information-enhanced GPS positioning (IAIE-GPSP) technique is decoupled from the specific requirements of specific telecommunication networks and protocols (such as CDMA). By decoupling the IAIE-GPSP capability from specific telecommunication network/protocol requirements, embodiments of the invention enable any type of device, irres...

The present invention relates to low-cost improvement of performance of multiple radio wireless access points. It relates to combinations of an antenna and one or more of a filter or an active components such as a power amplifier, low noise amplifier, switching diode or RF phase shifter (with a plurality of antennas), connected to the antenna connector of a radio component. Particular aspects of the present invention are described in the claims, specification and drawings.

A method for estimating position using WLAN access point radio propagation characteristics in a WLAN location based service is provided. A location-based services system has a plurality of Wi-Fi access points in a target area. The Wi-Fi access points are positioned at geographic locations and have signal coverage areas. A method of characterizing at least one of the Wi-Fi access points comprises determining the geographic location of the Wi-Fi access point, dividing the signal coverage area of t...

Apparatus, and an associated method, for facilitating identification of primary, secondary, and hidden SSID values in a multi-network WLAN system. A determiner embodied at a mobile terminal determines primary SSID values of networks whose beacon signals are delivered to the mobile terminal. And, responsive to the determinations, further determinations are made as to where to send subsequent probe requests to probe for secondary or hidden SSID values associated with the access points from which t...

A smart antenna steering algorithm operates in response to different functions monitored by the media access control (MAC) layer within a client station. One function is when the MAC layer indicates that the client station has been placed in a power savings mode. In response, the antenna algorithm stores an index of the currently selected antenna. Another function is when the MAC layer indicates that the client station has not been synchronized, associated and authenticated with an access point....

A smart antenna steering algorithm performs a self-monitored re-scan during a sustained use period after having selected a preferred antenna beam. During a sustained use period, a re-scan of the other antenna beams is not performed. The steering algorithm periodically monitors a quality metric of the ongoing radio link provided by the preferred antenna beam. The quality metric is based upon a signal quality metric and a link quality metric. If the quality metric drops below certain thresholds du...