Patent ID: 8125316

Claim:
A system for tracking an object, the system comprising: a first radio frequency identification (RFID) tag attached to the object; a central database; a database server communicatively coupled to the central database; a plurality of sensing antennas each provided with a location identifier, wherein the plurality of sensing antennas comprises a first sensing antenna that is provided with a first location identifier, the first sensing antenna being the sensing antenna that is positioned closest to the first RFID tag relative to the other sensing antennas; an antenna map comprising an address corresponding to each of the plurality of sensing antennas, wherein the antenna map is accessed to determine which sensing antennas are active, the antenna map comprising an address for each sensing antenna; and a plurality of interrogators positioned remotely from one another, each of the plurality of interrogators having at least one interrogating antenna coupled to at least some of the active sensing antennas, each of the plurality of interrogators being communicatively coupled to the database server and configured to interrogate RFID tags using the at least some of the active sensing antennas including the first sensing antenna and to use the at least one interrogating antenna to receive identifying information from the interrogated RFID tags, at least one interrogator of the plurality of interrogators being configured to update the central database via the database server with positional information identifying a current location of the first RFID tag identified by the interrogator via the first sensing antenna; wherein the current location of the first RFID tag is identified based on the first location identifier of the first sensing antenna.