Compression of location information during backhaul communications of a wireless location system

A wireless location system for locating at least one wireless asset located in an area enclosed by a facility, comprising:

• a plurality of wireless locators mounted at fixed locations distributed in the area, each comprising a controller, at least one wireless transceiver and a plurality of antennas configured in an antenna array, and each capable of wirelessly communicating with at least one other wireless locator for conveying location information of the at least one wireless asset;
• a central processing system configured to communicate with at least one of said wireless locators for gathering said location information from each of said plurality of wireless locators;
• wherein said at least one wireless transceiver of each of said plurality of wireless locators is configured to receive a wireless location signal from a nearby wireless asset and takes a plurality of samples from said wireless location signal including a set of samples for each of said plurality of antennas;
• and
• wherein said controller of each of said plurality of wireless locators compresses said plurality of samples to generate said location information of said nearby wireless asset, and wherein said controller compresses said plurality of samples using at least one of multiple compression methods including averaging, bit reduction, phase angle only selection, and accumulation and selection.

A method of optimizing a backhaul communication network of a wireless location system in an area enclosed by a facility by each of a plurality of wireless locators mounted at fixed locations within the facility, wherein the plurality of wireless locators are distributed in the facility and wherein each includes an array of antennas, and a central processing system that is configured to communicate with at least one of the wireless locators for gathering location information from each of the plurality of wireless locators, said method comprising:

• receiving a location signal from a nearby wireless asset within the area of the facility and taking a plurality of samples from the location signal including a set of samples for each of the plurality of antennas;
• compressing the plurality of samples to generate compressed location information using at least one of multiple compression methods including averaging, bit reduction, phase angle only selection, and accumulation and selection;
• and
• wirelessly transmitting the compressed location information to another one of the plurality of wireless locators.