Abstract: A system for conducting wireless communications between a vehicle computer and a remote system includes a passive radio frequency tag attached to a vehicle and electrically connected to at least one vehicle computer via an information bus, and a tag interface unit electrically connected to a remote computer system. The remote system is operable to control communications with one or more of the vehicle computers via a radio frequency link established between the tag and tag interface unit. The tag preferably includes a microprocessor-based computer electrically connected to the information bus, wherein the tag computer operates as a gateway for communications between the remote computer and any of the onboard vehicle computers including a vehicle/engine control computer, an interface module computer and a transmission control computer.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for communicating between a host and a motor vehicle, the motor vehicle including an on board computer system having a bus for communicating with a plurality of motor vehicle systems. The apparatus includes an electronic tag having a transceiver for transmitting data to and receiving data from the host, a memory for storing bus requests and bus response data, a decoder for decoding requests from the host, a bus interface for reading data from and writing data to the bus, a controller and a filter. The bus interface extracts responses from the bus responsive to requests from the host. The responses may be stored in the memory. The controller is responsive to write requests from the host to transfer data to the bus interface and responsive to read requests from the host to transfer data stored in memory back to the host. The filter is operable to filter responses received from the bus and includes a filter database.