SUCESSIVE MEMORY WRITES IN AN RFID INTERROGATOR

• US 20160189018A1
• Filed: 10/13/2015
• Published: 06/30/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 10/13/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Avery Dennison Retail Information Services LLC (Avery Dennison Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Avery Dennison Retail Information Services LLC (Avery Dennison Corporation)
• Inventors: Wimmers, David J., Duckett, Jeanne F., Neuhard, Lance D.
• Granted Patent: US 10,073,994 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2003/066 using ink jet
• CPC Class Codes: B41J 15/00 Devices or arrangements of selective printing mechanisms, e.g. ink-jet printers or thermal printers, specially adapted for supporting or handling copy material in continuous form, e.g. webs
• CPC Class Codes: B41J 2/335 Structure of thermal heads
• CPC Class Codes: B41J 2/36 Print density control
• CPC Class Codes: B41J 29/13 Cases or covers
• CPC Class Codes: B41J 3/4075 Tape printers; Label printers
• CPC Class Codes: B41J 3/50 Mechanisms producing characters by printing and also producing a record by other means , e.g. printer combined with RFID writer
• CPC Class Codes: B41M 5/0052 by thermal printing
• CPC Class Codes: B41M 5/0094 by thermal printing
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 1/00 Methods or arrangements for marking the record carrier in digital fashion
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 1/20 Simultaneous marking of record carrier and printing-out of data, e.g. printing-punch
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 17/0025 the arrangement consisting of a wireless interrogation device in combination with a device for optically marking the record carrier
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 19/0723 the record carrier comprising an arrangement for non-contact communication, e.g. wireless communication circuits on transponder cards, non-contact smart cards or RFIDs
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 19/0725 the arrangement being a circuit for emulating a plurality of record carriers, e.g. a single RFID tag capable of representing itself to a reader as a cloud of RFID tags
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 5/00 Methods or arrangements for verifying the correctness of markings on a record carrier; Column detection devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/00 Methods or arrangements for sensing record carriers, e.g. for reading patterns methods or arrangements for marking the record carrier in digital fashion G06K1/00; pattern recognition G06F18/00; arrangements for image or video recognition or understanding G06V10/00; character recognition, recognising digital ink or document-oriented image-based pattern recognition G06V30/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/10198 setting parameters for the interrogator, e.g. programming parameters and operating modes
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/10227 loading programming parameters or programs into the interrogator, e.g. for configuring the interrogator
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/10316 using at least one antenna particularly designed for interrogating the wireless record carriers antennas in general H01Q1/22
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/10366 the interrogation device being adapted for miscellaneous applications

Abstract

A high speed tabletop and industrial printer is disclosed with integrated high speed RFID encoding and verification at the same time. The industrial printer simultaneously prints on and electronically encodes/verifies RFID labels, tags, and/or stickers attached to a continuous web. The industrial printer comprises a lighted sensor array for indexing the printing to the RFID tags; and a cutter powered from the industrial printer for cutting the web that the RFID tags are disposed on. The industrial printer comprises two RFID reader/writers that are individually controlled. Specifically, one of the RFID reader/writers comprises the ability to electronically encode the RFID tags while the web is moving; and the second RFID reader/writer uses an additional RFID module and antenna on the printer for verifying the data encoded to the RFID tags. The printer provides for successive writes to various memory blocks and optimizes the communication sequence between the interrogator and tag.

Claims

1. A process for optimizing radio frequency identification (RFID) encoding by reducing the time required to complete a user defined function, comprising the steps of:

creating a high level configurable command stack optimization operation;

issuing individual commands via an RFID printer as one command;

allowing an RFID interrogator to process all the individual commands at once; and

responding to all the individual commands.

2. The process of claim 1, wherein the individual commands comprise Write EPC (electronic product code), Write Access, Password Lock, and Read EPC.

3. The process of claim 2, wherein implementation of the high level command stack optimization operation eliminates unnecessary overhead between the RFID printer and the RFID interrogator.

4. A process for optimizing the command sequence between an RFID interrogator and an RFID tag based on foreknowledge of the communication sequence, comprising the steps of:

removing query command;

removing ack command;

issuing a Req_RN command via the RFID interrogator;

issuing a handle New RN 16 via the RFID tag;

responding with an access command via the RFID Interrogator; and

responding with status via the RFID tag.

5. The process of claim 4, wherein removal of the query command and ack command reduces overall cycle time of the communication sequence.

6. The process of claim 4, wherein the status is either success or error failure for the command sequence.

7. The process of claim 6, wherein the access command is at least one of Req-RN, read, write, lock, kill, blockwrite, or blockerase.

8. The process of claim 7, wherein the steps are repeated before issuing another access command.

9. A process for optimizing system throughput via providing for successive writes to multiple memory blocks in a RFID Gen 2 tag device via a configurable composite RFID interrogator host write memory command before returning results of a command to a host, comprising the steps of:

accepting memory block identification for each memory block to be written and data to be written into each memory block;

executing RFID Gen 2 tag device commands via the composite RFID interrogator host write memory command to place the RFID Gen 2 tag device in an open state;

executing successive write commands to the multiple memory blocks of the RFID Gen 2 tag device defined in a host command; and

returning the RFID Gen 2 tag device to a ready state when all memory blocks have been written, and returning status of results to the host command.

10. The process of claim 9, wherein all memory blocks defined in a composite RFID interrogator host write memory command are executed while the RFID Gen 2 tag device is in the open state.

11. The process of claim 9, further comprising providing for multiple writes to various memory areas in the RFID Gen 2 tag device via the composite RFID interrogator host write memory command.

12. The process of claim 11, further comprising leaving the RFID Gen 2 tag device in the open state for duration of entire set of command write/verification operations conducted while the RF power from the RFID encoder is not altered

13. The process of claim 12, further comprising defining a command as a record with a first unique identification (ID), followed by a flag that specifies whether an optional tag identification (TID) is to be used for identifying the RFID Gen 2 tag device to be written to.

14. The process of claim 13, further comprising issuing at least one first write directive, wherein the at least one first write directive is comprised of a memory bank to write to, word offset into the memory bank to begin writing, number of words to write, and a flag that indicates whether the write is to be verified.

15. The process of claim 14, further comprising sending data to be encoded for each RFID Gen 2 tag device as a record beginning with a second unique ID that matches the first unique ID, followed by an optional TID used to identify the RFID Gen 2 tag device in the RF field, followed by at least one second write directive that matches the at least one first write directive.

16. The process of claim 15, wherein the at least one second write directive comprises actual data to be written to specified memory areas.

17. The process of claim 16, wherein after writing, verification of the specified memory areas will occur in the open state via chip architecture.

18. The process of claim 17, wherein if the chip architectures requires a new session for the verification, the verification will begin immediately after the write phase.

19. The process of claim 18, wherein upon completion of the write and verification phases, the composite RFID interrogator host write memory command returns the RFID Gen 2 tag device to the ready state and returns results to the host command.

20. The process of claim 19, wherein the composite RFID interrogator host write memory command would be used in an RFID enabled thermal barcode printer to allow a user to print and encode an RFID label without stopping a web to encode the RFID Gen 2 tag device.