Can a UHF Reader Be Connected to UHF Antennas Wirelessly?

And can Bluetooth be used for this purpose?

—Name withheld

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It really depends on what you mean by “connected.” It would be possible to separate an antenna from a reader and power the antenna separately, and to then send commands to the antenna via a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection. This is not very practical, though, since you would need to build a lot of additional capabilities into the antenna—it would need to have a separate power source, a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth transceiver, and some kind of central processing unit to understand and execute the commands. What’s more, you would be adding a lot of cost to the system without achieving much in terms of benefits.

If you are inquiring if the antenna can be powered via a wireless connection, then the answer is that it cannot. You can provide power over Ethernet, but power over Wi-Fi would cook people in the room.

—Mark Roberti, Founder and Editor, RFID Journal