Monitoring RFID Tags

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) uses radio wave tags to identify and wireless devices with radio waves. Active tags have a battery and transmit signals autonomously while passive tags have no battery. RFID tags often support additional and proprietary improvements to network integration, battery life, and other functions.

Supported RFID tag vendors include: Aeroscout, Ekahau, Innerwireless-PanGo, Vestac, and Newbury.

The Clients > Tags page displays the RFID tags that are heard by thin APs and reported back to a controller that AirWave monitors. Figure 1 shows an example of the list of tags.

To identify lost or stolen inventory, you can use the Inactive Tag trigger to generate an alert if a tag is not reported to AirWave after an interval. For information about enabling this trigger, refer to Client Triggers.

Figure 1 Tags Table

Table 1 describes the Tags table fields.

Table 1: Tags Table Information
Field	Description
Name	User-editable name associated with the tag. Click the pencil icon to edit the name, or add notes to the tag.
MAC Address	MAC address of the AP that reported the tag.
Vendor	Vendor of the tag. You can display all or filter by vendor.
Battery Level	Displays battery information—filterable in drop-down menu at the top of the column; is not displayed for Aeroscout tags.
Chirp Interval	Displays the tag chirp frequency or interval, filterable from the drop-down menu at the top of the column. Note that the chirp interval from the RFID tag influences the battery life of active tags as well as search times. If a tag chirps with very long chirp interval, it may take longer time for the location engine to accurately measure x and y coordinates.
Last Seen	Date and time the tag was last reported to AirWave.
Closest Device	The device that last reported the tag to the controller (linked to the AP monitoring page in AirWave).