Data management of RFID-based track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting in apparel supply chain

With recent advancement in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), RFID-based track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting has attracted considerable research interests. A track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting system requires an integral and reliable electronic pedigree (e-pedigree) to ensure high product visibility along the supply chain. With the continuous movements of large volumes of products along the supply chain, huge amounts of RFID data would be inevitably generated, posing great challenges to system development and operation. As such, the front-end RFID data should be well-formatted for efficient capturing, filtering, and synchronization in a logical and reliable way, so that the accumulated e-pedigree would be complete and trustworthy for subsequent product authentication. In this paper, we present an innovative track-and-trace anti-counterfeiting system for apparel products, and discuss a number of key data management issues, such as e-pedigree formatting, data synchronization, and traceability / visibility control. A data format of e-pedigree for full traceability of garments is proposed to support products authentication in item-level, products antilost in pallet-level and products status prediction in batch-level. Based on this format, a three-step mechanism of data synchronization is established to ensure e-pedigree integrity. To avoid possible leakage/falsification of e-pedigree data, an RBACbased access control is proposed as an auxiliary module of the anti-counterfeiting system.