Invention Grant
- Patent Title: Apparatus and method to determine a frozen state of an object as a function of an RFID tag receptionparameter
-
Application No.: US15180688Application Date: 2016-06-13
-
Publication No.: US09916528B2Publication Date: 2018-03-13
- Inventor: Bruce W. Wilkinson
- Applicant: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
- Applicant Address: US AR Bentonville
- Assignee: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
- Current Assignee: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
- Current Assignee Address: US AR Bentonville
- Agency: Fitch, Even, Tabin & Flannery LLP
- Main IPC: G06K19/07
- IPC: G06K19/07 ; G01N22/04

Abstract:
A control circuit determines a reception parameter for an RFID tag that is attached to an object (such as an ice pack) and then determines a frozen state of the object as a function of that reception parameter. By one approach the RFID tag provides a transmission to support the aforementioned determinations, which transmission provides no data that explicitly represents temperature. The reception parameter can comprise, for example, an indication of received signal strength. So configured, a relatively higher indication of received signal strength can serve to determine that the object is and/or remains at least substantially frozen while a relatively lower indication of received signal strength can serve to determine that the object is not at least substantially frozen.
Public/Granted literature
Information query