Applique Nodes for Performance and Functionality Enhancement in Radio Frequency Identification Systems
First Claim
1. An appliqué
- in communication with an antenna port of a RFID reader comprising a smart antenna having a transmit antenna and a plurality of receive antennas, the smart antenna including a plurality of matching demodulators, each matching demodulator attached to one of the receive antennas to demodulate a RF signal received by the attached receive antenna from an RFID tag, a plurality of matching a/d converters, each matching a/d converter attached to one of the matching demodulators and converting the demodulated RF signals to digital sample signals, and a digital signal processor for calculating the angle of arrival of the RF signal and locating the position of the RFID tag based on the digital sample signals.
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Accused Products
Abstract
In an RFID system with existing reader and tags communicating with each other, appliqués derive information by listening to this communication to yield significant performance benefits, while not affecting the communication between the existing nodes. For example, an appliqué capable of receiving beamforming can estimate the angle of arrival of the signal emitted by a tag, thereby providing information that can be used to localize the tag. An appliqué may be connected to an existing reader by means of an existing port, such as to an antenna port or to an Ethernet port. The information from appliquéscan be integrated with that obtained from existing nodes at either the appliqués, or further up the hierarchy in middleware.
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Citations
6 Claims
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1. An appliqué
- in communication with an antenna port of a RFID reader comprising a smart antenna having a transmit antenna and a plurality of receive antennas, the smart antenna including a plurality of matching demodulators, each matching demodulator attached to one of the receive antennas to demodulate a RF signal received by the attached receive antenna from an RFID tag, a plurality of matching a/d converters, each matching a/d converter attached to one of the matching demodulators and converting the demodulated RF signals to digital sample signals, and a digital signal processor for calculating the angle of arrival of the RF signal and locating the position of the RFID tag based on the digital sample signals.
- View Dependent Claims (2, 3)
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4. A method for locating the position of an RFID tag, comprising:
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(a) receiving a backscatter signal from the RFID tag by a plurality of antennas of an appliqué
in communication with an antenna port of a RFID reader;(b) demodulating the received backscatter signal; (c) converting the demodulated backscatter signal into digital sample signals; (d) reading the digital sample signals; and (e) calculating an angle of arrival of the backscatter signal received by the appliqué
based on the digital sample signals. - View Dependent Claims (5, 6)
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Specification