Granted Patent B2

US 12,581,268 · App. 17/603,892 · Granted Mar 17, 2026

Inventors: Jonathan R. Schoenberg (Fishers, IN); Adam M. Driscoll (Atherton, CA); E. Thomas Erdmann, IV (San Francisco, CA); Emmanuel Lalande (San Francisco, CA); Michael C. Laster (Santa Clara, CA); Scott Lopatin (San Francisco, CA); Robert W. Mayor (Half Moon Bay, CA); Siva Ganesh Movva (Cupertino, CA); Munish K. Poonia (San Jose, CA); Tommy Rochette (San Jose, CA); Christina Selle (Los Altos, CA); Langford M. Wasada (San Francisco, CA); Swadesh Bhattacharya (Sunnyvale, CA); Raghunandan K. Pai (Saratoga, CA); Brent M. Ledvina (San Francisco, CA)

Assignee: Apple Inc.

H04W4/023H04W4/029H04W4/20H04W52/0229H04W52/0254

Abstract

Claims (46)

1 . An electronic device comprising:

a wireless processor coupled with a wireless radio;

memory to store instructions; and

one or more processors to execute the instructions, wherein the instructions cause the one or more processors to:

scan for a beacon advertisement using the wireless processor while an application processor of the one or more processors is in a low power state;

store the beacon advertisement and a timestamp as an entry in a beacon advertisement buffer in response to detection of the beacon advertisement using the wireless processor;

cause the application processor to transition from the low power state to a high power state in accordance with a wake policy;

transfer buffer entries to the application processor in response to the application processor transitioning to the high power state; and

correlate the beacon advertisement within at least one buffer entry of the buffer entries with stored location data to determine a location estimate for a device associated with the beacon advertisement.

2 . The electronic device as in claim 1 , wherein the one or more processors are additionally to process the beacon advertisement buffer to remove duplicate entries.

3 . The electronic device as in claim 1 , wherein the beacon advertisement buffer is a circular buffer.

4 . The electronic device as in claim 1 wherein the wireless processor is to filter the beacon advertisement and other beacon advertisements based on an advertisement type associated with a respective beacon advertisement.

5 . The electronic device as in claim 4 , wherein to filter the beacon advertisement and the other beacon advertisements includes to determine if the respective beacon advertisement includes an indicator that a location for the device associated with the beacon advertisement is to be determined.

6 . The electronic device as in claim 1 , wherein the stored location data includes location data determined based on a Wi-Fi scan, the Wi-Fi scan performed while the application processor of the one or more processors is in the low power state.

7 . The electronic device as in claim 1 , wherein the stored location data includes location data determined based on data received from a satellite-based positioning service.

8 . The electronic device as in claim 1 , wherein the one or more processors are additionally to:

encrypt the location estimate for the device associated with the beacon advertisement using a beacon identifier broadcast with the beacon advertisement; and

transmit a hash of the beacon identifier and an encrypted location estimate for the beacon advertisement to a device locator server.

9 . The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein the timestamp is associated with when the beacon advertisement was detected.

10 . The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein the buffer entries comprise the beacon advertisement and the timestamp.

11 . The electronic device of claim 1 , wherein the beacon advertisement comprises a public key that is generated by the device based on the timestamp and a shared secret generated by the electronic device.

12 . A non-transitory machine-readable medium storing instructions to cause one or more processors of an electronic device to perform operations comprising:

scanning for a beacon advertisement using a wireless processor of the electronic device while an application processor of the electronic device is in a low power state;

storing the beacon advertisement and a timestamp as an entry in a beacon advertisement buffer in response to detecting the beacon advertisement using the wireless processor;

causing the application processor to transition from the low power state to a high power state in accordance with a wake policy;

transferring buffer entries to the application processor when the application processor transitions from the low power state to the high power state; and

correlating the beacon advertisement within at least one buffer entry of the buffer entries with stored location data to determine a location estimate for a device associated with the beacon advertisement.

13 . The non-transitory machine-readable medium as in claim 12 , the operations additionally comprising processing the beacon advertisement buffer to remove duplicate entries.

14 . The non-transitory machine-readable medium as in claim 12 , the operations additionally comprising configuring the wireless processor to filter based on an advertisement type, wherein filtering based on the advertisement type includes determining whether the beacon advertisement includes an indicator that a location for the device associated with the beacon advertisement is to be determined.

15 . The non-transitory machine-readable medium as in claim 12 , wherein the stored location data includes location data determined based on a Wi-Fi scan, the Wi-Fi scan performed while the application processor of the one or more processors is in the low power state.

16 . The non-transitory machine-readable medium as in claim 12 , wherein the stored location data includes location data determined based on data received from a satellite-based positioning service.

17 . The non-transitory machine-readable medium as in claim 12 , the operations additionally comprising:

encrypting the location estimate for the device associated with the beacon advertisement using a beacon identifier broadcast with the beacon advertisement; and

transmitting a hash of the beacon identifier and an encrypted location estimate for the beacon advertisement to a device locator server.

18 . A method comprising:

on an electronic device having a wireless processor coupled with a wireless radio:

scanning for a beacon advertisement using the wireless processor of the electronic device while an application processor of the electronic device is in a low power state;

storing the beacon advertisement and a timestamp as an entry in a beacon advertisement buffer in response to detecting the beacon advertisement using the wireless processor;

processing the beacon advertisement buffer to remove duplicate entries;

causing the application processor to transition from the low power state to a high power state in accordance with a wake policy;

transferring buffer entries to the application processor when the application processor transitions from the low power state to the high power state; and

correlating the beacon advertisement within at least one buffer entry of the buffer entries with stored location data to determine a location estimate for a device associated with the beacon advertisement.

19 . The method as in claim 18 , additionally comprising configuring the wireless processor to filter based on an advertisement type, and wherein filtering based on the advertisement type includes determining if the beacon advertisement includes an indicator that a location for the device associated with the beacon advertisement is to be determined.

20 . The method as in claim 18 , additionally comprising:

encrypting the location estimate for the device associated with the beacon advertisement using a beacon identifier broadcast with the beacon advertisement; and

transmitting a hash of the beacon identifier and an encrypted location estimate for the beacon advertisement to a device locator server.

Continuity (4)

References Cited (391)