Samsung's New Patent Lets Offline Devices Borrow GPS Location From Nearby Phones
Most location-sharing systems fall apart the moment a device loses its internet connection. Samsung's new patent flips that around by turning any nearby connected phone into a living, breathing GPS anchor.
How Samsung's peer-to-peer location sharing actually works
Right now, a device that can't reach the internet or get a clear GPS signal is effectively lost. It can't tell you where it is, and it can't tell anyone else either. That's a real problem for tracking tags, wearables, and gadgets deep inside buildings or in crowded venues.
Samsung's patent describes a system where devices with working GPS and internet act as "lead" devices. Any nearby device that lacks those connections can ping the lead devices over Ultra Wideband (UWB), a short-range radio technology known for centimeter-level accuracy, and use their known positions to calculate its own location.
The offline devices stay passive, doing as little work as possible, while the lead devices handle the heavy lifting. It's a bit like triangulating your position using your friends' phones instead of a fixed cell tower.
… a first portion of the plurality of devices have network access and a second portion of the plurality of devices have no network access …
Translation: Some phones have internet service while others do not.
How UWB ranging replaces fixed anchor points
The system sorts a group of devices into two buckets. The first bucket contains devices that have both GPS and network access; these become lead devices and anchor the whole system by knowing exactly where they are. The second bucket contains devices with no network access; these become passive followers.
Each device carries three sensors:
- A GPS sensor for absolute outdoor positioning
- An IMU (inertial measurement unit, basically an accelerometer and gyroscope combo) to track movement between GPS fixes
- A UWB sensor for precise short-range ranging between devices
When an offline device needs to know where it is, it exchanges UWB signals with one or more lead devices. Because UWB can measure the time it takes a radio pulse to travel between two points, it can calculate distance to within a few centimeters. Combined with the lead devices' known GPS coordinates, the offline device can solve for its own position through a process called multilateration (the same math cell towers use, but far more precise and done peer-to-peer).
The lead devices also act as data-sharing relays, passing information on behalf of the offline devices that have no direct network path. The patent calls this architecture "anchor-less" because, unlike traditional indoor positioning systems, it requires no pre-installed fixed hardware on walls or ceilings.
The remaining devices act passively to locate their coordinate positions using the lead devices as a reference and as a medium to share resources.
Translation: Offline phones figure out where they are by using online phones as beacons.
What this means for tracking devices in GPS-dead zones
Fixed indoor positioning systems, the kind that require Bluetooth beacons or UWB anchors bolted to walls, are expensive to install and maintain. They exist in airports and some warehouses, but almost nowhere else. A system that turns existing devices into temporary anchors could bring reasonable indoor positioning to any space where a few connected phones are already present.
For consumers, the most obvious use is asset tracking: luggage tags, pet trackers, or shared equipment in an office that wanders into a basement with no cell signal. Samsung's steady investment in UWB-based location tech suggests this is part of a longer-term push to make the Galaxy ecosystem a serious contender in the precision-location space, where Apple's AirTag network already has strong consumer recognition.
This is the 1239th Samsung filing in our Samsung coverage since May, adding to work like the AI workout body double and the self-checking self-driving system.
The problem this patent attacks is real and not small. GPS doesn't work indoors. Fixed beacon infrastructure costs serious money and rarely gets deployed outside logistics and airports. The gap between "good enough for a map" and "good enough to find your bag in a basement" is enormous, and most consumer devices fall straight into that gap.
The anchor-less approach is the right-sized answer to that problem. By treating every GPS-capable phone as a temporary reference point, the system avoids the infrastructure cost that has kept precise indoor positioning out of everyday life. The math (UWB time-of-flight ranging plus multilateration) is well-established; the novelty is in the coordination layer that organizes which devices lead and which follow.
The open question is density. The system needs at least a few connected devices nearby to work at all, which makes it reliable in crowded venues and unreliable in empty stairwells. That's an honest limitation, not a fatal one, but it means the technology is best understood as a useful improvement on today's tracking rather than a complete solution.
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The drawings
31 drawing sheets from US 2026/0266948 A1 · click any drawing to enlarge
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