Associating prior arrangements with on-premise manual transactions and concomitant presence of actor's presence-advertising emitter in fine resolution region

A method that includes automatically associating prior arrangements with a transaction conducted by way of a transaction-processing location, the method comprising:

• receiving at two or more co-located directional antennas, radio presence advertising signals (PA-signals or PAS's) repeatedly broadcast from a PAS emitter and relaying the received signals to one or more respective radio receivers used for the co-located directional antennas, the co-located directional antennas being directed to cover a predetermined fine resolution region of interest within or operatively adjacent to the transaction-processing location;
• in the respective one or more radio receivers, determining corresponding signal reception characteristics of the radio PA-signals that were received at a substantially same time by two or more of the co-located directional antennas;
• determining a degree of correlation between corresponding ones of the determined signal reception characteristics of at least one pair of the two or more respective radio PA-signals that were received at a substantially same time by two or more of the co-located directional antennas;
• in response to the determined degree of correlation satisfying predetermined criteria, obtaining from the PAS emitter an identification of a transactor associated with the PAS emitter and/or an identification of at least one transaction associated with the PAS emitter;
• and
• using at least one of the one or more identifications obtained from the PAS emitter to obtain specifications for prior arrangements made in association with the transaction conducted by way of the transaction-processing location;
• and
• automatically applying to the conducted transaction those of the obtained prior arrangements that relate to the conducted transaction.

A machine system that automatically associates prior arrangements with a transaction conducted by way of a transaction-processing location, the system comprising:

• two or more co-located directional antennas structured to receive radio presence advertising signals (PA-signals or PAS's) repeatedly broadcast from a radio PAS emitter and to relay the received signals to one or more respective radio receivers used for demodulating the received signals, the co-located directional antennas being directed to cover a predetermined fine resolution region of interest within or operatively adjacent to the transaction-processing location;
• respective signal strength measuring circuits in the respective one or more radio receivers, the measuring circuits structured to determine corresponding strengths of the radio PA-signals that were received at a substantially same time by two or more of the co-located directional antennas;
• a first generator structured to generate from the determined strengths, a current strength difference signal for at least one pair of the two or more respective radio PA-signals that were received at a substantially same time by two or more of the co-located directional antennas, the generated current strength difference signal indicating a difference between a first of the determined corresponding strengths, that is optionally weighted, and a second of the determined corresponding strengths, that is optionally weighted;
• a second generator structured to use the generated current strength difference signal to generate a degree of correlation signal that indicates the likelihood of presence of the radio PAS emitter within the predetermined fine resolution region of interest;
• and
• an identification extractor responsive to the second generator and structured to obtain from the PAS emitter an identification of a transactor associated with the PAS emitter and/or an identification of at least one transaction associated with the PAS emitter in response to the generated degree of correlation signal satisfying predetermined criteria;
• a prior-arrangements associator responsive to the identification extractor and structured to use one or more of the identifications obtained from the PAS emitter while it is determined to be located in the fine resolution region and to associate specifications for prior arrangements made in association with a transaction conducted by way of the transaction-processing location and to automatically apply those of the associated prior arrangements that relate to the conducted transaction.

A computer system comprising one or more processors and a memory having collectively stored therein instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to determine a likelihood of presence of a radio PAS emitter (a presence advertising signal emitter) within a predetermined fine resolution region of interest and to fetch prior arrangement information corresponding to the determined presence, the executed instructions comprising:

• obtaining from a respective one or more radio receivers, reception characteristic data representing corresponding reception characteristics of radio PA-signals (presence advertising signals) received at a substantially same time by two or more of co-located directional antennas, the received radio PA-signals being those repeatedly broadcast from the radio PAS emitter and relayed to the one or more respective radio receivers that are operatively coupled to the co-located directional antennas, the co-located directional antennas being directed to cover the predetermined fine resolution region of interest;
• generating from the obtained reception characteristic data, a degree of correlation indicating a likelihood of presence of the radio PAS emitter being within the predetermined fine resolution region of interest;
• and
• responsive to the degree of correlation signal satisfying predetermined criteria, fetching prior arrangement information corresponding to a transaction conducted in operative proximity to the fine resolution region of interest and applying the fetched information so as to modify the conducted transaction in accordance with the fetched prior arrangement information.