Patent ID: 8199689

Claim:
A method, comprising: forming clusters of distributed data carriers; for each of said clusters, identifying a bridge data carrier that is operable to communicate with a bridge data carrier of another of said clusters by defining a bridge zone as a region where a power output level from said at least one of said data carriers in a first cluster, which is sensed by another one of said data carriers in a second cluster, exceeds a cumulative power that is sensed by said another one of said data carriers from all of the data carriers in the first cluster by a threshold value; enabling communication between data carriers of the different clusters via the identified bridge data carrier, at least some of said data carriers including batteryless passive data carriers, wherein each data carrier in the cluster is operable to communicate with the respective bridge data carrier; and forming coalitions of clusters of distributed data carriers based on the enabled communication between the data carriers of the different clusters, each coalition of clusters including at least two of the clusters of distributed data carriers.