| CPC G01S 1/02 (2013.01) [G01S 5/017 (2020.05); H04W 4/029 (2018.02); H04W 88/08 (2013.01)] | 15 Claims |
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1. A method of determining a location of an object:
providing a tracker by a first user, the tracker-comprising:
a wireless transmitter arranged to periodically transmit a wireless access point beacon comprising SSID (network name) and/or a MAC address, in accordance with an IEEE 802.11 standard; and
a power storage device arranged to be charged with energy, and arranged to power the wireless transmitter;
providing a server and monitoring operation of the server, wherein:
the server is arranged to receive and to collate, locations associated with wireless access points from respectively authenticated software applications of third party GNSS enabled portable devices, the applications being adapted to control their respective portable devices to detect the wireless access point beacons from at least one tracker and report the detected wireless access point beacons to the server along with GNSS locations of the portable devices at a time of the detection;
receiving and recording, at the server, the SSID and/or MAC address transmitted in the wireless access point beacon from the tracker and received by at least one of the third party GNSS enabled portable devices; and
informing, by the server, the first user in an event that a location of the tracker is uploaded onto the server;
wherein:
the tracker comprises an energy harvesting module, arranged to collect energy from an ambient source of energy.
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