Ingenia Technology is commercially developing the laser surface authentication system which involves instrumentation costing no more than a few thousand US dollars plus licensing costs.
The LSA system reads the surface of the inherent structure of paper and plastics (not clear glass) with a reputed reliability level of at least one million trillion, capturing microscopic signatures of surfaces.
Microscopic irregularities due to the structure of the paper fibres or the setting of the plastic result in complex scattering of the laser beam through the optical phenomenon of "speckle". This forms the basis of a signature unique to any given sheet of paper or plastic.
Packaging would be "fingerprint" read on the way out of the factory. The fingerprint is then stored in a central database or written onto the item using an encrypted barcode. To check the validity of the item later in the field, the fingerprint would be re-read and compared against the database or against the barcode.
Two different scanners exist: a static scanner, designed for probing moving items such as on a production line or printing press, and a hand-held moving-head scanner, for verifying static items. When comparing a scanned fingerprint against a database of possible matches, a standard desktop PC can check 10 million/sec, and a more sophisticated server 100 million entries/sec.
Professor Cowburn, a director and chief technology officer of Ingenia, is adamant the inherent identity code is impossible to replicate.
