Patent ID: 8248239

Claim:
A method of managing maintenance and asset tracking of safety equipment on an aircraft, comprising: providing a passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tag, the passive RFID tag comprising a plurality of RF network nodes mounted on the tag, wherein at least one of the plurality of RF network nodes is in electronic communication with at least one other of the plurality of the RF network nodes, and wherein at least one of the plurality of RF network nodes is in data communication with a memory location within the RFID tag and wherein at least one other of the plurality of RF network nodes is in data communication with a memory location different from said memory location within the RFID tag; coordinating data communicated between the plurality of RF network nodes such that the plurality of RF network nodes communicate data from the different memory locations upon interrogation of the RFID tag by an RFID reader, wherein said step of coordinating comprises coordinating information storage across the plurality of RF network nodes in a manner such that the plurality of RF network nodes acts as a single memory location; and associating the passive RFID tag with safety equipment, wherein the maintenance, inventory management, and asset tracking of the safety equipment is managed in association with information stored in the different memory locations.