RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is an important enabling technology for logistics and supply chain management systems. The amount RFID devices will continue to leap in coming years. It was predicted that China will need at least 4.5 billion RFID devices in 2008, and 5.5 billion in 2010. At present, there are well over 100 RFID vendors and enterprises inChina.
Despite enormous propaganda on RFID and its great potential, large-scale deployment of the trust-enabled RFID technology is still uncommon. There is an immediate need to further advance the trustworthy technology of RFID before its benefits can truly be realized in Logistics and Supply Chain Management (LSCM). Challenging problems have been raised by the industry on security and privacy. Solutions to these problems will bring major impacts on the popular deployment of the RFID technology, which is a core area of logistics and supply chain management.
Our team is dedicated to developing a set of trustworthy RFID methodologies and critical technologies to exploit the emerging opportunities.
Previous website was published here: http://www.srfid.org/
HKUST RFID Security & Privacy Group was launched by Prof. Yunhao Liu in 2008, in the Department of Computing Science and Engineering, HKUST. It aims at establishing a research and practice environment to improve the current technolegies and systems of RFID security & privacy. Due to the strong research abilities, the group has attracted a wide attention in both academia and industry.
With the deep background of computer science, communication, and methematics, the group is dedicated to conducting both fundamental and application research in RFID technology. Its goals are to enhance secruity and privacy protection on RFID, reduce the cost of writing and maintaining of RFID software, and invent novel computing technologies. The group's research mainly (but not limited to) focuses on designing of cryptographic protocols, evaluation of attacks, and implementation of RFID technologies.
Besides participating academic Symposiums, the group is ofen invited to give talk ,training, consulting and auditing to industial partners. Thus, it has a close relationship with its partners.
The group is supported by LSCM, which aims to strengthen collaborative applied research activities between the industry and research organizations.
Trustworthy RFID Technologies: Methodology and Practice
RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is an important enabling technology for logistics and supply chain management systems. The amount RFID devices will continue to leap in coming years. It was predicted that China will need at least 4.5 billion RFID devices in 2008, and 5.5 billion in 2010. At present, there are well over 100 RFID vendors and enterprises in China.
Despite enormous propaganda on RFID and its great potential, large-scale deployment of the trust-enabled RFID technology is still uncommon. There is an immediate need to further advance the trustworthy technology of RFID before its benefits can truly be realized in Logistics and Supply Chain Management (LSCM). Challenging problems have been raised by the industry on security and privacy. Solutions to these problems will bring major impacts on the popular deployment of the RFID technology, which is a core area of logistics and supply chain management.
We propose to develop a set of trustworthy RFID methodologies. Based on the research expertise of this project team, four critical technologies will be developed for trustworthy RFID computing to exploit the emerging opportunities. First, we design a privacy preserving authentication mechanism for enabling trust while protecting the user’s private information. Second, in recognition of the increasing importance of RFID in LSCM, we will develop a set of efficient trustworthy RFID protocols both for capacity-limited RFID devices and large-scale systems. Third, we will propose secure authentication and self-protection schemes for enhancing the security of trustworthy RFID computing infrastructure. Last, we will develop a trustworthy platform to support security and privacy development for RFID systems.
With them, we shall introduce an integrated solution for trustworthy RFID computing to the market and license the trustworthy RFID methodology to LSCM vendors and users.
In short, this project aims to:
- Develop privacy preserving authentication methodologies for security and privacy with RFID. In this design, we let RFID tags issue encrypted authentication messages to the RFID reader, and the reader searches the key space to locate the tags.
- To establish an efficient and secure RFID authentication architecture for deploying the proposed methodologies in large-scale LSCM systems. LSCM systems typically support millions or even billions of products. In a large-scale system, the authentication efficiency is crucial especially with embedded privacy protection techniques.
- To establish an extensible platform integrating existing and future technologies with the trustworthy RFID system. The heterogeneity of RFID devices enables flexible implementation in many industries, such as retail, logistics and inventory management according the application needs.
In respect the practical aspect of our field, we maintain a strong partnership with other universities in China. We are also involved in research projects in collaboration with international companies and benefit from private or public funds. We have received funding from Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC) and a number of funds and sponsorships from key players in the industry.
-
Hong Kong University Of Science and Technology
-
Innovation and Technology Commission
-
China Post
-
Xi'an Jiao Tong University
-
Value+
Our team includes a group of faculty members, postdoctoral fellows and Ph.D students in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Investigator
 |
Dr. Yunhao Liu Principle Investigator Associate Professor Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
 |
Dr. Prof. Shing-Chi Cheung Co-Investigator Associate Professor Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
 |
Dr. Qian Zhang Co-Investigator Associate Professor Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
Team Leaders
 |
Dr. Jinsong Han |
 |
Zhuo Liu Development Manager Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
 |
Lei Yang PhD student R&D Manager Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Xi'an Jiaotong Univeristy |
 |
Qingsong Yao PhD student R&D Manager Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Xi'an Jiaotong University |
Team Members
 |
Tao Chen PhD student Hong Kong University of Science and Technology National University of Defense Technology |
 |
Panlong Yang PhD student Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
 |
Chonghui Xiao Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
 |
Shan Chang PhD student Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Xi'an Jiaotong University |
 |
Ye Yuan PhD student Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Northeastern University |
 |
Zhigang Li PhD student Hong Kong University of Science and Technology National University of Defense Technology |
 |
Xi Zhou PhD student Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
 |
Wei Xi PhD student Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Xi'an Jiaotong University |
 |
Zhenjiang Li PhD student Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
 |
Yuwei Jiang Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
Besides the R&D tasks, we also made efforts in application-oriented experiments and pilot studies. Especially, the popularity of Internet of Things (IOT) inspires us to seek more opportunities for adopting our technologies in the real applications. We are now working on two directions, postal application and food safety application. To each of them, our trust RFID based technologies and solutions will play an important role in providing secure logistics services and food surveillance.
Postal application
Although adopting RFID can significantly improve delivery and supply efficiency, security concerns remain due to the lack of sophisticated trust solutions for RFID enabling interoperable e-logistics. As one of the largest logistical organizations, Post will play an important role in the future e-logistics applications. To this end, postal enterprises have to address the major obstacles in providing a trust solution, such as the construction of RFID-enabled LSCM systems, cross-domain sharing and trustworthy collaboration, open and heterogeneous features of e-logistics systems. Our project can meet the urgent needs of postal enterprises for trust RFID enabled Interoperable e-logistics.
To demonstrate the soundness and effectiveness of our proposed technologies, we conduct a pilot study in the real e-logistics trading environment. The objective is to enable the trustworthy interoperable transactions across the different e-logistics trading systems. To this end, we coordinate with our partners to set up a pilot system that simulates the real e-logistics trading network. The pilot system will contain major factors of e-logistic application and reflect the real e-logistics systems. Based on the pilot system, we can conduct the pilot study to test the performance of our solutions in across-domain e-logistics transactions.
Food safety
Food safety is a big concern in modern society. Some serious accidents, such as the 2005 Hong Kong Malachite green scare, 2008 China milk scandal, and 2011 Taiwan toxic drink crisis, happened recently and caused a lot of troubles to the people’s health and public safety. Motivated by providing a trustworthy, traceable, efficient, and online food surveillance service, we conducted pilot study and experiment in Linan, Hangzhou, China, with a joint research project, Greenorbs. Greenorbs is a non-profitable research project for enabling an ecological surveillance in the forest, which can provide the food-source safety guarantee in the food supply chain.
It collects various data including temperature, humidity, illumination, and carbon dioxide titer. The collected information will be used for the surveillance from the source of food production. For example, as a typical Chinese food material, bamboo shoots are largely needed in China. The planting, collection, storage, process, and transportation procedures of bamboo shoots require effective monitoring and trustworthy management. We deploy wireless sensors in above procedures. The sensors will collect the environment information and transfer to the needed data for backend process and monitoring. We also adopt our proposed trust solution to support the trustworthy surveillance and management in the entire food supply chain.
Recently, we are also working on the next generation of embedded sensing and tagging device, sensing tag. This kind of tag combines the advantages of wireless sensors and RFID tags. Especially, some of them do not need battery. It will employ the capacitance as a tool for energy harvesting and supplying. Compared to most source-limited RFID tag, it can support more complex computation that will facilitate to enhance our trust solution. Thus, the sensing tag is a promising way for supporting trustworthy supply chain and logistics flows, especially for those food-related applications, in the future.
