Abstract: A virtual beacon system that provides proximity alerts is described. The proximity alerts are based on the location of a mobile device (100) and a location of interest. The method may include the steps of providing sensor readings for signals, calculating a mobile device location, determining the distance between a mobile device and a product location (202) and generating a proximity trigger (208). A described virtual beacon system includes a monitoring access point (104) for providing sensor readings and transmitting proximity triggers, a location cloud service (106) for calculating a mobile device (100) location and proximity alert service (108) for generating proximity triggers based on the mobile device location.

Abstract: A vehicle or other mobile communication entity (102) locates objects using received (typically radio frequency) signals (104, 106). These received signals included multi-path versions of the transmitted signals (104). The received signals may include packets having location information of the transmission source. The receiving vehicle may track, or know, its own position. The receiving entity may determine properties for a multi-path version of the signal (208, 210). These properties may include a delay, a Doppler and an angle of reception (122, 124) for one or more multi-path versions of the received signal. The receiving entity may also measure an imbalance (504) induced between a pair (or more) of antenna elements (302) for a particular multi-path version of the signal received. This imbalance may be dependent on the angle of arrival of the particular signal being received.