Wireless location using signal fingerprinting and other location estimators

A method for estimating, for each mobile station MS of a plurality of mobile stations, a location, L for MS using wireless signal measurements obtained from transmissions between the mobile station MS and a plurality of terrestrial communication stations, wherein each of said communications stations has one or more of each of a transmitter and a receiver for Tirelessly communicating with the mobile station MS, comprising:

• first receiving a request for locating the mobile station MS;
• second receiving, in response to said step of first receiving, one or more location hypotheses of the mobile station MS, wherein each location hypothesis includes a representation of a location estimate of the mobile station MS, and wherein said one or more location hypotheses are determined using one or more MS location related outputs from one or more of location information determiners, wherein (A1) (A2) following hold:
• (A1) for determining a corresponding portion of the location related outputs for the mobile station MS, each of said one or more location information determiners is dependent upon (I) and (II) following:
• (I) at least some of a plurality of data instances, wherein, for each of a plurality geographical locations, there is one of the data instances having, (i) and (ii) following:
• (i) a representation of the geographical location, and
• (ii) multipath information of wireless signal data obtained using transmissions between one of the mobile stations and the communication stations, wherein the one mobile station transmits from approximately the geographical location of (i);
• and
• (II) multipath data indicative of wireless signal multipath transmissions between the MS and the communication stations;
• (A2) for each representation of a location estimate from said location information determiners, there is a corresponding collection of wireless receivers of the communication stations from which multipath data indicative of wireless signal multipath transmissions between MS and the corresponding collection of receivers are used by the location information determiner for determining its location related outputs, wherein for at least a first and a second representation of location estimates, their corresponding collections are different;
• transmitting, to a predetermined destination, via a communications network, resulting information related to the location of the mobile station MS, wherein said resulting information is obtained from said one or more MS location estimates of said location hypotheses.