APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR BRIDGING A WIRED NETWORK AND WIRELESS DEVICES

A bridge apparatus is provided for interfacing or bridging between a wired network having wired communication devices and wireless devices. The bridge apparatu s of the present invention is typically used in a warehouse inventory control system or the like. In one embodiment, the bridge apparatus includes two more radios having different modalities in order to provide different modality and/or types of coverage to different wireless devices. In another embodiment, a single bridge apparatus offers different coverage areas. The bridge apparatus has a filter device for filtering data received from the wired network, and forwards the filtered data to a wireless device. Thus, data can be forwarded to the wireless devices fr om the wired network without a need for protocol conversion. In another embodiment, a bridge apparatus functions both as an access point to filter data received from the wired network, and as a base station to convert protocol information included in data received from the wired networ k.