摘要 |
A master entity is capable of broadcasting commands to a plurality of three-state-selection machine slaves. Transitions from one state to another are effected on instruction from commands in a sequence of commands broadcast from the master. Slaves move to another state when they satisfy a primitive condition specified in the command. By moving slaves among the three sets, a desired subset of slaves can be isolated in one of the sets. This desired subset of slaves then can be moved to one of the states that is unaffected by commands that cause the selection of other desirable subsets of slaves. In the embodiments of the incorporated U.S. Pat. No. 5,673,037, certain subgroups of radio frequency (RF) tags are selected for querying, communicating, and/or identifying by commands from a base station. Commands from the base station may cause the tags to change state which either prevents or allows a given tag to participate in an identification process. In this way, a given subgroup(s) of tags meeting certain criteria can be selected for querying, communicating, and/or identifying.
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