Patent ID: 8514081

Claim:
A radio frequency identification (RFID) system for localizing an RFID tag, the system comprising: a plurality of radio frequency identification (RFID) tag readers; a computer in signal communication with the plurality of RFID tag readers over a network; a memory associated with the computer, the memory storing a network model having a plurality of endpoints and oriented links between the endpoints, wherein the endpoints are associated with physical locations in space, each of the endpoints having associated with it one or more radio frequency identification (RFID) tag readers; the computer being configured to operate a software module that localizes the RFID tag based on data received from the RFID tag readers; the oriented links each being associated with at least one semantic attribute associated with a defined path of travel and a direction between at least two of the endpoints; the software module further being configured to associate the semantic attribute to the RFID tag by: mapping one of the oriented links to a source endpoint at a first physical location and a destination endpoint at a second physical location; determining that the RFID tag is present at the source endpoint at a first time value and that the RFID tag is present at the destination endpoint at a second time value; determining that the RFID tag has traversed the oriented link, including the path of travel and the direction, to travel from the source endpoint to the destination endpoint; and associating the semantic attribute to the RFID tag based on the determination that the RFID tag has traversed the oriented link; the software module further being configured to apply access control rules, wherein the access control rules are associated with the network model in which the computer module includes an indication of one or more of the oriented links through which the RFID tag is authorized to pass at one or more times and further includes one or more of the oriented links through which the RFID tag is not authorized to pass at one or more times.