Patent ID: 8547206

Claim:
A noncontact IC medium direction detecting apparatus, comprising: a single antenna structure with multiple receiving elements for reading a signal containing information from a noncontact IC medium in different directional orientations; and an information processing means that receives the information from the single antenna structure and performs processing of the information, the information processing means being arranged to perform: a first obtaining process of aiming a directional orientation of the single antenna structure toward a first direction to obtain a signal level of a signal received from the noncontact IC medium having predetermined identification information; a second obtaining process of aiming another directional orientation of the single antenna structure toward a second direction, which is different from the first direction, to obtain a signal level of a signal received from the noncontact IC medium having the predetermined identification information; a composition process of, in order to determine an existence direction of the noncontact IC medium, subjecting the signal levels corresponding to the first and second directions, which signal levels have been received from the noncontact IC medium having the predetermined identification information, to subtraction operation or division to obtain a composite signal level expressed as one of a continuously increasing function and a continuously decreasing function within a threshold range; and an existence direction determining process of, if the composite signal level falls within the threshold range, which is preset according to a combination of the first and second directions, determining that the noncontact IC medium of interest exists in a direction of an angle derived from one of the continuously increasing function and the continuously decreasing function.