SBIR Phase I: Universal Chip-less Identification of Inventory Using Antennas Tuned to Existing Networks

The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will be to create an active supply chain through serialization of nearly every product for better data and efficiency. Each year corporations lose over $818 B because of inadequate inventory systems. This affects the entire supply chain and reduces the potential for faster distribution of better products. Manufacturers, shippers and consumers need to track their products from manufacturing, logistics, retail and even the home using a singular tag. The savings from accurately tracking and identifying inventory will be billions of dollars per year and will significantly reduce waste. The opportunities for data collection for individuals and companies throughout the lifecycle of the product will also potentially spur new industries and disrupt older industries. The proposed project brings together several different innovations into an inventory tracking and identification system, including antennas, thin film detection and polarized dielectrics. The project involves both computational and laboratory experiments that will design and validate the technology, including the development of software tools to assist distinguishing the tags in real-life environments. The problems to be studied are reading data from ambient network (4G, 5G, or even Wi-Fi) signals via chip-less tags, omni-directional detection, and printing directly onto non-conductive material. The project will iteratively and effectively tackle these problems through advanced R&D focusing on antenna design, thin-film manufacturing, and signal-processing. 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.