Application of an Integrated Multi‐Sensor Circuit for Tracing Quality and Safety Storage Parameters of Sliced Cheese

Abstract

In this work, storage environment and food preservation quality parameters of a specific kind of sample (Emmental sliced cheese) were monitored for 32 days under four different storage conditions thanks to the development of a dedicated multisensor smart tag. Dry matter, pH value, colour index, and water activity, have been analyzed to estimate the quality of preservation of the food samples over time. Furthermore, the long-term reliability and performance of the ad-hoc developed fullyintegrated smart label system for food tracing has been validated. The low-power multi-sensor integrated circuit, employed to continuously monitor the conservation parameters for the sliced cheese samples, has been fabricated in 0.18 µm CMOS technology, and includes temperature, light intensity and optional humidity sensors with the respective interface circuits and a common A/D converter. Collected sensors data have been then studied together with physical and chemical analyses to find correlations between the conservation quality of food samples and the collected environmental data history.