RFID device groups

• US 8,452,860 B2
• Filed: 05/23/2008
• Issued: 05/28/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 01/04/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Agarwal, Abhishek, Kumar, Anush, Sriram, Balasubramanian, Jain, Bhuvanesh, Sundaram, Jayaram Kalyana, Gopalan, Krishnan, Venkatesh, Ramachandran
• Primary Examiner(s): Ibrahim, Mohamed
• Application Number:
  US12/125,947
• Publication Number:
  US 20080288625A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,831 Days
• Field of Search: 709220-223, 709/227
• US Class Current: 709/223
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/0008 General problems related to the reading of electronic memory record carriers, independent of its reading method, e.g. power transfer
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/10366 the interrogation device being adapted for miscellaneous applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/08 User group management

Abstract

The claimed subject matter provides a system and/or a method that facilitates configuring at least one radio frequency identification (RFID) device. An RFID network can include at least one device associated with a device group, wherein the device group corresponds to a characteristic. An organizational manager can uniformly configure the at least one device based at least in part upon membership of the device group.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

an RFID network including a plurality of devices partitioned into at least two device groups, wherein a subset of the plurality of devices is associated with a particular device group corresponding to a characteristic;

an organizational manager configured to manage the subset of the plurality of devices based at least in part upon membership of the subset of the plurality of devices to the particular device group;

a bind component configured to bind a process to the subset of the plurality of devices based at least in part upon the membership of the subset of the plurality of devices to the particular device group; and

a transfer component configured to manipulate the membership of at least one of the subset of the plurality of devices from the particular device group to a disparate device group;

wherein the organizational manager is further configured to perform a first operation on the at least one of the subset of the plurality of devices when associated with the particular device group, and wherein the organizational manager is configured to perform a different operation on the at least one of the subset of the plurality of devices when associated with the disparate device group.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the organization manager is further configured to

examine a device group hierarchy,

determine whether the link is a hard link of the subset of the plurality of devices to the particular device group hierarchy, and

if the link is a hard link, wait until binding information is updated before performing the operation.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the operation includes a rename operation executed without the wait if it is determined that the link is not a hard link.

4. The system of claim 1, the transfer component configured to enable a change in device group membership for the subset of the plurality of devices in response to a user request.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the transfer component is further configured to enable the change in device group membership via a user interface utilizing a hierarchical tree.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the bind component is further configured to maintain a list of currently running processes that either have a hard link or a soft link to the subset of the plurality of devices.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the bind component is further configured to link a device group and associated devices to the process.

8. The system of claim 6, wherein the process is configured to utilize a rule-based system in association with an application related to the RFID network such that at least one of a filter and an alert corresponds to a rule.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the rule includes at least one of the following properties:

the rule is contained within a rule set that adheres to an event, a condition, and an action;

or the rule is represented utilizing an extensible markup language (XML).

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the condition has at least one of a set of predicates and a logical connective to form a logical expression that evaluates to one of a true and a false.

11. The system of claim 6, wherein the process includes at least one of the following:

an outbound process;

a manufacturing process;

a shipping process;

a receiving process;

a tracking process;

a data representation process;

a data manipulation process;

a security process;

or a process utilizing one of an RFID device service, a device collection, a tag read, an event, an event queue, a tag write, a device configuration, or a number count.

12. The system of claim 1, further comprising a security component configured to provide a security privilege related to the subset of the plurality of devices based at least in part upon membership to the particular device group.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the security component is further configured to utilize a plurality of distinct security levels respectively correlating to a plurality of device groups.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein the security component is further configured to provide access for the process to event data of the device group, based at least in part on credentials associated with the process.

15. The system of claim 1, further comprising at least one interface configured to utilize a hierarchical tree to represent device groups and at least one device within the RFID network.

16. The system of claim 1, the RFID network further including a collection of devices that form a sub-system which includes:

an RFID reader configured to receive an RFID signal; and

an RFID tag that configured to transmit to at least one device.

17. A computer-implemented method comprising:

receiving data related to at least a subset of devices within an RFID network;

creating at least two device groups, wherein a particular device group that includes the subset of devices is distinguishable from a different device group that excludes the subset of devices, and wherein at least one of the subset of devices is transferable from the particular device group to the different device group;

binding the subset of devices to a process; and

implementing management of the at least one of the subset of devices based at least in part upon a device membership, wherein the management comprises performing a first operation on the at least one of the subset of devices when the device membership is with the particular device group, and wherein the management comprises performing a different operation on the at least one of the subset of devices when the device membership is with the different device group.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising:

deploying a plurality of devices within the network; and

partitioning the plurality of devices into the at least two device groups based upon one of the following;

a location;

a function;

a security;

a process device relationship;

a make of the at least one device;

a model of the at least one device;

a type of the at least one device;

or a device frequency.

19. The method of claim 17, further comprising setting an effective security of the subset of devices based on a security setting of a parent device group and a security setting of the subset of devices.

20. A computer-readable storage memory storing instructions, the instructions if executed by a computing device causing the computing device to perform operations comprising:

deploying an RFID network that includes a plurality of devices partitioned into at least two device groups, wherein a subset of the plurality of devices is associated with a particular device group that corresponds to a characteristic, and wherein at least one of the subset of the plurality of devices is transferable from the particular device group to a disparate device group;

implementing a binding to maintain a relationship between an RFID process and the subset of the plurality of devices; and

configuring the at least one of the subset of the plurality of devices based at least in part upon a device membership, wherein the configuring comprises performing a first operation on the at least one of the subset of the plurality of devices when the device membership is with the particular device group, and wherein the configuring comprises performing a different operation on the at least one of the subset of the plurality of devices when the device membership is with the disparate device group.