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The blossoming of sensing solutions based on the use of carbon materials and the pervasive exploration of compressed sensing (CS) for developing structural health monitoring applications suggest the possibility of combining these two research areas in a novel family of smart structures. Specifically, the authors propose an architecture for security-related applications that leverages the tunable electrical properties of a graphite oxide (GO) paper-based tamper-evident seal with a compressed-sensing (CS) encryption/authentication protocol. The electrical properties of GO are sensitive to the traditional methods that are commonly used to remove and replace paper-based tamper-evident seals (mechanical lifting, solvents, heat/cold temperature changes, steam). The sensitivity of the electro-chemical properties of GO to such malicious insults is exploited in this architecture. This is accomplished by using GO paper to physically realize the measurement matrix required to implement a compressive sampling procedure. The proposed architecture allows the seal to characterize its integrity, while simultaneously providing an encrypted/authentication feature making the seal difficult to counterfeit, spoof, or remove/replace. Traditional digital encryption/authentication techniques are often bit sensitive making them difficult to implement as part of a measurement process. CS is not bit sensitive and can tolerate deviation caused by noise and allows the seal to be robust with respect to environmental changes that can affect the electrical properties of the GO paper during normal operation. Further, the reduced amount of samples that need to be stored and transmitted makes the proposed solution highly attractive for power constrained applications where the seal is interrogated by a remote reader.
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