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Facilitating rfid tags to refrain from participating in a subsequent inventorying attempt

Facilitating rfid tags to refrain from participating in a subsequent inventorying attempt description/claims

This application claims priority from U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/920,686, filed on 2007 Mar. 29, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference for all purposes.

This application claims priority from U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/932,627, filed on 2007 May 31, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference for all purposes.

This application claims priority from U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/005,249, filed on 2007 Dec. 4, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference for all purposes.

This application may be found to be related to commonly owned and assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. ______, filed by the same inventors, on the same day as the instant application, entitled “RFID TAG CHIPS AND TAGS REFRAINING FROM PARTICIPATING IN A SUBSEQUENT INVENTORYING ATTEMPT AND METHODS”, Attorney Docket No. 50133.92USU1/IMPJ-0282.

The present description addresses the field of Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) systems.

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) systems typically include RFID tags and RFID readers. RFID readers are also known as RFID reader/writers or RFID interrogators. RFID systems can be used in many ways for locating and identifying objects to which the tags are attached. RFID systems are particularly useful in product-related and service-related industries for tracking objects being processed, inventoried, or handled. In such cases, an RFID tag is usually attached to an individual item, or to its package.

In principle, RFID techniques entail using an RFID reader to interrogate one or more RFID tags. The reader transmitting a Radio Frequency (RF) wave performs the interrogation. The RF wave is typically electromagnetic, at least in the far field. The RF wave can also be predominantly electric or magnetic in the near field.

A tag that senses the interrogating RF wave responds by transmitting back another RF wave. The tag generates the transmitted back RF wave either originally, or by reflecting back a portion of the interrogating RF wave in a process known as backscatter. Backscatter may take place in a number of ways.

The reflected-back RF wave may further encode data stored internally in the tag, such as a number. The response is demodulated and decoded by the reader, which thereby identifies, counts, or otherwise interacts with the associated item. The decoded data can denote a serial number, a price, a date, a destination, other attribute(s), any combination of attributes, and so on.

An RFID tag typically includes an antenna system, a radio section, a power management section, and frequently a logical section, a memory, or both. In earlier RFID tags, the power management section included an energy storage device, such as a battery. RFID tags with an energy storage device are known as active or semi-active tags. Advances in semiconductor technology have miniaturized the electronics so much that an RFID tag can be powered solely by the RF signal it receives. Such RFID tags do not include an energy storage device, and are called passive tags.

Problems arise when more and more tags are desired to be inventoried, in less and less time. There is less time as tags are moving.

An emerging pattern is that some tags are occasionally harder to read than others, even with repeated inventorying attempts. Such tags could be, for example, in the center of a large group. This pattern can become a problem when there is less time to read the group, such as when the group is moving past the antennas without stopping.

The invention improves over the prior art.

Briefly, the present invention provides RFID reader systems, readers, components, software and methods for inventorying RFID tags in one or more early attempts. Then they can facilitate the inventoried RFID tags to refrain from participating in one or more subsequent inventorying attempts.

The invention offers the advantage that, when these tags refrain from participating in the subsequent attempts, they permit these attempts to be used more intensively for inventorying the more elusive, harder-to-read tags, especially in more demanding scenarios.

These and other features and advantages of the invention will be better understood from the specification of the invention, which includes the following Detailed Description and accompanying Drawings.

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