Integrated multi-sensor circuit for environmental data tracing in safe food storage and delivery: The sliced Emmental cheese case study

In this work the long term reliability and performance of a developed fully-integrated smart label system for food tracing has been validated, while carrying out the case study of monitoring the qualitative conservation of a packaged food product, i.e. sliced Emmental cheese, preserved under four different storage conditions in controlled environment for one month. Parameters of interest both for the end-customers and the distributors, which are subject to variation due to exposure to unsuitable storage temperature and light radiation, like dry matter, pH value, color index, and water activity, have been analyzed to estimate the quality of preservation of the food samples over time. The developed CMOS 0.18μm integrated smart label traces temperature, light intensity and optionally humidity data in digital domain for the food storage environment. Concerning the case study, collected sensors data have been compared with laboratory analyses results on samples to define a correlation between conservation quality and environmental parameters data log.