Patent ID: 7126994

Claim:
A method of communication between a communication station and one or more data carriers, the data carriers present within a communication range of the communication station, the method comprising: supplying an interrogation signal to all the data carriers present within the communication range allowing the communication station to start an interrogation cycle; receiving the interrogation signal by all the data carriers present within the communication range during the interrogation cycle; supplying a response signal from the one or more data carriers to the communication station in response to the interrogation signal; receiving by the communication station one or more of the response signals individually and, as a consequence, separately; receiving by the communication station one or more of the response signals at least two at a time and, as a consequence, not separately; supplying an acknowledge signal from the communication station to any of the data carriers whose response signal has been received separately by the communication station; receiving and evaluating the acknowledge signal by the data carrier whose response signal has been received separately by the communication station; in which as a result of the evaluation of the acknowledge signal, disabling each data carrier whose response signal has been received separately by the communication station from receiving the interrogation signals supplied subsequently by the communication station: in which after a termination of the interrogation cycle, supplying an interrogation signal by the communication station in order to start a subsequent interrogation cycle; generating by the communication station each acknowledge signal as a component of an extended interrogation signal; effecting the communication between the communication station and the data carriers in one or more time-sequential slots; supplying the response signals in the time-sequential slots; receiving by the communication station one or more of the response signals individually and therefore separately with each response signal appearing alone in a time slot, generating the acknowledge signal in the form of a digital signal with the aid of the communication station, where the digital signal represents a bit string having a given number of main bits, with each main bit associated with a time slot, and those main bits which are associated with a time slot in which a response signal from the data carrier has appeared alone are set to a given bit value; adding to each main bit at least one additional bit, both the main bit and the one additional bit represented by means of the digital signal; and generating as a parameter of the data carrier the bit value of each additional bit.