The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 01, 2007
Filed:
Dec. 10, 2004
James June-ming Wang, San Marino, CA (US);
Jack Winters, Middletown, NJ (US);
Robert Warner, Holmdel, NJ (US);
James June-Ming Wang, San Marino, CA (US);
Jack Winters, Middletown, NJ (US);
Robert Warner, Holmdel, NJ (US);
Motia, Inc., Pasadena, CA (US);
Abstract
The present invention relates to use of a smart antenna for a RF reader on a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system to significantly increase the operating range of the RFID system. The smart antenna can be an adaptive antenna array. The smart antenna comprises a plurality of antenna elements and, by combining the signals from multiple antenna elements, significantly increases the received signal-to-noise ratio. In a noise limited environment, combining the signals to maximize the received signal-to-noise ratio can be based on the maximal ratio combining (MRC) principle. To achieve the best signal quality, the received signal from each antenna can be phase-shifted such that the resultant signals from all antennas are in phase. In addition, the signal from each antenna can be scaled in amplitude based on the square root of its received signal-to-noise ratio.