Pallet with wireless transceiver for communicating pallet manifest, condition and location information

Abstract

The inventions involve material handling apparatus including pallets developed to operate in radio frequency rich environments. Apparatus are provided having at least one large compartment capable of enclosing at least one electronic device or a package populated with a plurality of devices. Articles with attached RFID item tags are loaded onto the apparatus. The apparatus includes an RFID reader/writer interrogator for communicating with the RFID item tags to maintain a pallet manifest. The apparatus includes RFID pallet tags that communicate with the device, the RFID item tags and RFID beacon tags positioned within distributed RFID networks. The RFID pallet tags include sensors to monitor pallet conditions to which a pallet management system is responsive. The apparatus includes wireless transceivers for communicating indicative information through LAN, WLAN and Cellular communications networks. The apparatus includes a power resource in order to facilitate long term autonomous operation.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.