SBIR-STTR Award

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will be on any industry or product category that suffers from product counterfeiting; that is to say on nearly every industry imaginable. It is estimated that the global counterfeit market will grow from $1.2 Trillion in 2017 to more than $1.8 Trillion by 2020. In an attempt to combat this trend, spending on anticounterfeit packaging will grow from $122 Billion in 2017 to $264 Billion by 2023. Of most dire concern, the counterfeit pharmaceutical industry is estimated at approximately $200 Billion, resulting in about 1 million deaths annually. Existing anti-counterfeit packaging techniques have proven largely ineffective in combating this counterfeiting problem. This project will result, for the first time, in packaging or seals that, without ambiguity, inform users of the authenticity, integrity, and provenance of any product outfitted with the project?s resultant technology. All stakeholders in a supply chain will be enabled to detect fake goods before they can be used or consumed. This increased visibility into the supply chain will also broaden enforcement opportunities for relevant entities and/or authorities and provide special benefit to those industries most urgently impacted: pharmaceuticals, military/defense products and high-priced goods. The proposed innovation is a novel enhancement to Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) that seals any package or container to which it is attached and, when queried by a reader/interrogator (e.g. any modern smartphone), provides the status (i.e. tampered/un-tampered) and identity to the user or system. The project will produce the designs and manufacturing techniques required to create RFID-based seals that provide assurance of authenticity, integrity, and provenance for products to which these seals are applied. Research will be conducted on several specific hardware components required by this innovation and will produce the requisite software and cryptographic systems for the testing, design, and commercialization of this proposed solution to product counterfeiting. Developed software will provide the testing and development framework for commercial applications of the proposed anti-counterfeiting solution. Advances in hardware design, especially concerning the minimization of power requirements for the RFID-based seals and the manufacturing techniques for specific required hardware components (i.e. the components that detect tampering events) will be accomplished during this research project. Research and development activities will employ varied techniques including iterative design, 3D printing, and advanced electronics prototyping. This SBIR Phase I project will ultimately result in the design and validation of production-ready seals. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will result in a reduction of counterfeit physical goods on a global scale, serving industries including pharmaceutical, defense, and others. The proliferation of counterfeit goods is growing at an alarming rate, estimated at $1.2 trillion in 2017 and expected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2020. Furthermore, approximately 300,000 children die each year from receiving fake medicines to treat aliments such as malaria, pneumonia, and other diseases. The proposed technology will mitigate economic loss incurred from the proliferation of counterfeit goods for organizations, governments, and individuals, and improve the health and safety associated with the risk of counterfeit or tampered goods. This innovation will be inexpensive to manufacture and can be widely applied. Additionally, anyone in the supply chain, even an end-consumer with a common smart phone, can ensure that a product enabled with this innovation is authentic and untampered.The proposed project will continue development of a novel enhancement to Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) that applies the concept of digital encryption to a physical seal or product packaging to detect if the barrier has been compromised. The project will advance the development of this technology by addressing two key development and engineering challenges. First, the project aims to miniaturize its current Printed-Circuit-Board (PCB) architecture into a single Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). While the PCB architecture is functional, its part count will be reduced by 95%. This will provide an orders-of-magnitude reduction in per-device cost and ensure suitable manufacturing yields. Second, the project will optimize the development of a tamper-sensing method.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.