A positioning system for determining the location of a receiver relative to a transmitter. The system includes two transmitting coils configured to transmit a periodic signal with a respective selected frequency during a positioning event, wherein the frequencies of the two signals transmitted by the two transmitting coils during the positioning event are different. A receiver includes a sensing unit for measuring the magnetic field vectors produced by the two simultaneously transmitting coils. A computing unit is configured to use the measured magnetic field vectors to calculate the position and orientation of the receiver with respect to the transmitter's coordinate frame.