RFID receive-only system

• US 20080231450A1
• Filed: 03/23/2007
• Published: 09/25/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/23/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Posementier, Joshua
• Granted Patent: US 7,986,235 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 340/572.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/10356 using a plurality of antennas, e.g. configurations including means to resolve interference between the plurality of antennas
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/10475 arrangements to facilitate interaction with further interrogation devices, e.g. such that at least two interrogation devices may function and cooperate in a network of such devices

Abstract

A receive-only supplemental radio frequency identification (RFID) reader may receive response signals from RFID tags, digitize and interpret those signals, and transfer the resulting data to a primary RFID reader. By relieving the primary RFID reader of some or all of the tasks of receiving, demodulating, and decoding concurrent responses from multiple RFID tags, the primary RFID reader may be made less expensive and/or may devote its resources to other tasks.

Claims

1. An apparatus, comprising

a receive-only radio device to receive concurrent wireless signals from multiple radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, the radio device comprising:

a digital signal processor to convert the received wireless signals into digitized data representing contents of the wireless signals; and

a communications interface to transmit the digitized data to another device.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the communications interface comprises a wired interface.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein said another device comprises an RFID reader with capability for concurrent wireless transmission and wireless reception.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the receive-only radio device is further to:

receive signals from an RFID reader addressed to at least one RFID tag; and

convert the received signals from the RFID reader into digitized data representing contents of the received signals from the RFID reader.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the wireless signals have a frequency in an ultra high frequency (UHF) band.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising a dipole antenna coupled to the communications interface.

7. The apparatus of claim 1, where the communications interface is further to transmit supplemental information about the digitized data.

8. The apparatus of claim 7, where the supplemental information includes at least one of:

identification of a particular RFID tag;

time of arrival of data from the particular RFID tag;

number of times the particular RFID tag has responded in current read cycle.

9. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the communications interface is to transmit identification data from a particular RFID tag only once in a read cycle.

10. A method, comprising:

receiving wireless signals through an antenna of a read-only wireless communications device from multiple radio frequency identification (RFID) tags;

converting the received signals into a digital format;

processing the digital signals to extract encoded data and separate the encoded data from separate RFID tags; and

transmitting the data to another device through an interface other than the antenna.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein said transmitting is performed through a wired interface.

12. The method of claim 10, where said transmitting is performed through a wireless interface using a different frequency band than used by the received signals from the RFID tags.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

receiving a signal from an RFID reader through the antenna; and

determining data content of the signal from the RFID reader.