Counterfeiting poses a significant threat to global commerce, causing economic damage and jeopardizing consumer safety. This report addresses the critical need for advanced anti-counterfeiting measures. While often confused, authentication verifies an item’s genuineness, whereas anticounterfeiting is a broader strategy that includes authentication to deter counterfeit production. This report explores such technologies, which are primarily based on tangible objects and can be used as an anticounterfeiting measure. Such technologies, referred subsequently as “hardware-based anticounterfeiting techniques”, provides a critical line of defence in the fight against imitation of goods. This review covers diverse methods: electronic, mechanical, chemical, and marking techniques. The report emphasizes that no single technique is sufficient, advocating for a multi-layered approach. By combining these hardware solutions with complementary measures like supply chain monitoring, we can create a more resilient defense against counterfeiting.

Sidelobes in the two-way radiation pattern are of serious concern in a radar array. Several techniques have evolved to mitigate the problem, which include amplitude tapering, Genetic Algorithm (GA) optimization, thinning transceiver aperture, and two-weight amplitude distribution. With such optimization schemes, the sidelobes can be considerably suppressed but at the cost of a reduction in directivity or taper efficiency. Further, such amplitude tapers require a complex feeding network design. This work alleviates such design restrictions and proposes a systematic approach to lower the sidelobes in radar two-way shared aperture arrays. The proposed methodology can achieve a sidelobe level (SLL) of below -52 dB in both linear and planar arrays, which is about 18 dB enhancement in SLL compared with uniform transmit and thinned receive arrays. In addition, as a result of the equal transceiver array size in the proposed design, an improvement of approximately 0.44 dB and 0.68 dB in directivity is achieved in linear and planar arrays, respectively. A novel feeding architecture is also illustrated to reduce the cost and complexity of the overall feeding network. A set of full-wave simulations have also been performed to validate the theoretical results.

A wideband ridged horn using printed circuit and substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technologies has been explored in this paper. A stepped flaring has been introduced in E-plane by adding multiple substrate layers which is further loaded by a pair of E-plane flared balanced ridges to increase its operating bandwidth. The proposed technique is free from the requirement of any chemical glue or adhesive. A conventional SIW based H-plane flaring is used. This horn is found to operate over 70% impedance bandwidth showing a consistent 3D symmetric broadside radiation with 8.7-19 dBi peak gain.

A new type of Planar Inverted F- Antenna (PIFA) has been conceived and demonstrated using a fully planar structure to provide quasi- omnidirectional type radiations over a wide operating bandwidth. Miniaturized segmented SIW technology has been extended with some modifications to accommodate two distinct modal geometries in a single structure. The new approach has been systematically studied and their equivalent circuits have been developed. A prototype has been experimentally tested in C-band revealing quasi- omnidirectional radiations with 1.3 dBi peak gain and 48.5% matching bandwidth. This miniaturized wideband omnidirectional antenna should find potential applications in compact wireless transceiver systems occupying 0.45$\lambda_{0}\times$0.2$\lambda_{0}$ real estate, bearing the radiator size 0.19$\lambda_{0}\times$0.06$\lambda_{0}$.

An electrically small substrate‐integrated waveguide (SIW) antenna is investigated. The electrical size of the circular cavity SIW is reduced by repetitive segregation along the quasi‐magnetic wall to form 64th‐mode SIW antenna while maintaining comparable performance to the full‐mode SIW. The ground plane behind the antenna is removed to obtain quasi‐omnidirectional radiation pattern. The proposed antenna operates from 3.3 to 3.72 GHz making it suitable for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX‐IEEE 802.16) applications. S ‐parameters and radiation patterns have been investigated by electromagnetic simulations and measurements. A realised peak gain of 4.1 dBi is obtained at the operating frequency of the antenna.

A novel methodology for designing Chipless Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags realized using the Additive Manufacturing technologies and exhibiting a high number of identification states is proposed and investigated. An encoding scheme based on the resonances and anti-resonances of the input impedance of the resonator is employed for identifying the tag, which is achieved by exploiting the set of zero-crossing points of the tag reactance. A tolerance analysis is also performed to avoid any ambiguity in the reading process and to minimize the redundancy, thus providing unique electromagnetic signatures which are also suitable for anti-counterfeiting applications. Several prototypes have been fabricated and tested to assess the practical implementation of the proposed encoding scheme.