Reliable food traceability using RFID tagging

Abstract

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technology has numerous potential applications in various industries. One important use is for complete traceability of a specific product with the added advantage of being able to verify that quality controls have been passed, with all the necessary steps complied with and for the time required. The aim of this work is to present a food traceability system using RFID tags with contents guaranteed secure by the use of public-key cryptography and at an affordable cost without the need for substantial investment in infrastructure. Aggregate signatures are used so that all the steps can be signed in a reduced memory space. This type of signature is a cryptographic primitive that "consolidates" several signatures into one in such a way that if n users sign n messages, all the signatures can be grouped into one single signature. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.