A technique to provide a WLAN-based positioning system to determine a location of a mobile wireless receiving device. A single access point is used to generate a plurality of beacons, in which each beacon of the plurality of beacons has a unique identifier. Each beacon is then transmitted in a different direction from other beacons. When the receiving device receives at least one of the transmitted beacons, signal strength or some other signal parameter is obtained from the at least one received beacon. The received signal parameter is used to determine the location of the mobile receiving device.