RFID In-Flight Security Seal

In the airline industry, on board sales are often faced with issue of pilferages. It is difficult to determine which party is involved in this issue as no strong evidence can be used to prove it. Plastic security seals are commonly used to secure contents of the airline trolleys for on board sales have proven to be easily compromised. This project proposes a solution to this issue by developing a prototype of an electronic seal through the use of semi-passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. Semi-passive RFID technology does not interfere with the avionic control system, which make it an ideal choice to be implemented on board. This project is essentially a system integration of semi-passive RFID, active RFID and microcontroller which involves the development of firmware programming with power aware computing technique. Tampering the electronic seal triggers the system and wakes up the microcontroller. The microcontroller stores events in memory and returns to sleep mode. During investigation, data of the electronic seal can be read or downloaded. Further analysis of the data could be carried out to ensure the time stamp is tally with the personnel scheduling. In conclusion, the author proposes a concept solution to this serious issue of pilferages in the airline industry by developing an electronic seal which is avionic approved.