US 8,427,335 B2Granted

Physical layer management using RFID and near-field coupling techniques

AssigneePanduit Corp.

InventorsJack E. Caveney, Ronald A. Nordin

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Abstract

An intelligent network physical layer management system is provided that includes hardware that tracks the connection of plugs of patch cords in interconnect or cross-connect patching environments. RFID signaling is combined with near-field communication techniques to provide a reliable physical layer management system. In interconnect configurations, RFID tags are associated with switch ports of an Ethernet switch, enabling the system of the present invention to detect patch cord insertion and removal at switch ports and to receive information about the switch ports. In cross-connect configurations, RFID signaling is used to track the connections of patch cords between two patch panels. Systems according to the present invention avoid the problems associated with traditional galvanic connections previously used for tracking patch cord connections. An alternative common-mode system is also described.

Claims13

Dependent claims

A physical layer management system comprising:

a first jack, the jack having an associated RFID tag and an associated signal generator;
a second jack, the second jack having an associated RFID reader;
and
a patch cord, the patch cord having two plugs, each plug having:
a plug antenna and an LED circuit, each LED circuit having a first circuit containing a first light emitting diode (LED) and having a first resonant frequency, and a second circuit containing a second LED and having a second resonant frequency, wherein the first resonant frequency is different than the second resonant frequency, and
wherein each LED circuit is electrically connected to the other, each plug antenna is electrically connected to the other, and wherein the signal generator is configured to generate a signal at a frequency of at least one of the first resonant frequency and the second resonant frequency such that the generation of the signal will illuminate at least one of the first LED and the second LED and wherein the RFID tag is configured to send a signal over the patch cord to the RFID reader.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.