Radio frequency identification (RFID) tag location verification using short range communication

A method of electronic article surveillance (EAS), comprising:

• first transmitting, over a first window of time, a radio frequency identification (RFID) interrogation signal into an RFID interrogation zone of an EAS system,
• first receiving at least one RFID response signal from a first RFID tag of the EAS system responding to the interrogation signal;
• second transmitting, over a second window of time overlapping at least in part with the first window of time, a non-RFID RF signal into a second zone, the second zone and the RFID interrogation zone overlapping to form a zone of interest;
• second receiving, from the first RFID tag, an indication that the first RFID tag received the second transmission;
• and
• determining, based on receiving both the at least one RFID response signal from a first RFID tag of the EAS system responding to the interrogation signal and the indication that the first RFID tag received the second transmission, that the first RFID tag is in the zone of interest.

An electronic article surveillance (EAS) tag, comprising:

• an RFID subsystem operative to receive an RFID interrogation signal and respond with an RFID response;
• and
• a non-RFID RF subsystem, operative to receive a non-RFID RF signal and respond by wirelessly indicating that the non-RFID subsystem received the non-RFID RF signal,
• wherein the non-RFID subsystem responds that the non-RFID RF subsystem received the non-RFID RF signal by one of:
• allowing the RFID subsystem to respond to the RFID interrogation signal with an RFID response only upon the non-RFID RF subsystem having received a non-RFID RF signal concurrently;
• supplementing the RFID response with at least one information element indicating that the non-RFID RF subsystem received the non-RFID RF signal;
• and
• separately transmitting a non-RFID response.