Patent ID: 8878649

Claim:
A method comprising: at a control circuit that is operably coupled to a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag reader: using a first interrogation mode to read RFID tags, wherein the first interrogation mode comprises an interrogation mode selected from the group consisting of an Electronic Product Code (EPC) Gen2 standard-compatible session 0, 1, 2, and 3 approach and wherein the first interrogation mode prompts receiving RFID tags to respond using a first approach to responding; in response to a first pre-determined condition, automatically switching to using a second interrogation mode to read RFID tags wherein the second interrogation mode comprises an interrogation mode selected from the group consisting of an Electronic Product Code (EPC) Gen2 standard-compatible session 0, 1, 2, and 3 approach, wherein the first and second interrogation modes are different from one another and wherein the second interrogation mode prompts receiving RFID tags to respond using a second approach to responding that is different from the first approach to responding, wherein the first pre-determined condition comprises, at least in part, an RFID tag read rate value, such that the automatic switching occurs when the RFID tag read rate as measured while using the first interrogation mode is less than the RFID tag read rate value.