Patent ID: 7382229

Claim:
A method for coordinated management of a plurality of contactless radio-frequency readers of chips incorporating electronic microcircuits, the method comprising: transmitting, in a first time interval, transmit operations composed of command instructions from each of the plurality of readers to the electronic microcircuits of the chips associated with each respective reader; and receiving, in a second time interval, receive operations composed of responses from the electronic microcircuits of the chips associated with each respective reader, wherein the first and second time intervals do not overlap, wherein each of the plurality of readers are active readers, whereby the active readers are synchronized to group their respective transmitting and receiving into distinct time intervals, and wherein a synchronization process includes: collecting durations of the transmit operations for sending the command instructions of first transmit/receive cycles of the active readers; and sending the active readers instructions to execute the transmit operations for sending the command instructions of transmit/receive cycles spread over time and in order of decreasing duration of the transmit operations, beginning with the reader assigned the command instruction of the transmit/receive cycle having a greatest duration, a delay between executing one instruction and the next being equal to a difference between the durations of the transmit operations of the transmit/receive cycle command instructions to be transmitted by the corresponding two readers, up to executing the instruction associated with the shortest duration of the transmit operations.