This is a paper on provenance and smart garments I just published together with colleagues from advanced materials, engineering and information sciences. Here is the abstract:
There is a significant nascent market for ethically produced products with enormous
commercial potential around the world. A reliable method to signal the provenance of products is
therefore critical for industry, given that competition based on price is not a viable strategy. The
ability to trace and signal ethical treatment of animals is also of significant value to textiles
manufactures. The efficacy of such a method can be measured with respect to the cost of
implementation, scalability, and the difficulty of counterfeiting. The key to traceability is to win the
trust of the consumer about the veracity of this information. Wearable sensors make it possible to
monitor and improve the management of traceability and/or provenance. In this paper, we
introduce a method for signalling the provenance of garments using radio frequency watermarks.
The proposed model consists of two levels of authentication that are easy to use by legitimate
vendors, but extremely difficult to imitate or hack, because the watermark is built-in and based on
the radiation signature of electroactive materials.
And here is the full paper: