I think that you can make it different ways of approaching this:
-As stated before, if it is in the same building, you can use the power line to transmit data. Search the net for X10 transmissions. At microchip they have sone design notes about this.
-The radio approach (as stated before also): Could be easier to implement (or not), it depends on what you want to spend. There are kits of trasmitter and receiver for this with are arround 20 euros or less each. These kits you can connect it to a microcontroller and send the data. You can also make this by yourself, but I don't recommend it, because tunning is could be difficult.
-Other method could be ultrasounds, but I am not sure what distance could it cover.
Pardon my poor english, I'm spanish.
Hope this helped you.