# A Traceable and Verifiable Tobacco Products Logistics System with GPS and RFID Technologies
## 3 The Proposed Scheme
### System Architecture  
1. ID Issuer (IDI): An official organization authorized by the government of the country. They receive the application of the tobacco products' ID from the manufacturer. This party checks the validity of the manufacturer; if they are a legal company, a list of tobacco products will be generated by the chaincode in the blockchain center. 2. Tobacco ID Tag (TID): A unique ID issued by the ID issuer. The ID is a sticker-based material with a RFID tag. Every pack of legal tobacco products should have one ID tag to prevent smuggled products. 3. Mobile reader (MR): A mobile device that can read tobacco ID tags and can position the location with GPS. Every party involved in the logistics phase must have at least one MR such as the manufacturer, logistics, distributor, or retailer. These parties need to log in to the MR with their private key. Every TID on the tobacco products should be scanned by MR when the tobacco products are produced, sent, or received by the shipper or recipient. 4. Competent authorities (CA): Multiple official organizations that are authorized by the government of the country such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Tobacco Tax, Trade Bureau (TTB), etc. Every CA must have the ledger in the blockchain center to ensure and verify the integrity of the data. The CA that provide the permits for the production of tobacco products have the highest authority and mainly deal with any connection from other parties. 5. Manufacturer (MF): A company that produces tobacco products; it can also be a tobacco importer. Before producing tobacco products, they need to apply the product's ID from the ID Issuer. The ID that is applied and obtained from the IDI should be applied to the tobacco package. 6. Blockchain Center (BCC): The blockchain that records the logistics information of the tobacco products. When a manufacturer needs to produce tobacco products, they need to apply an ID from the IDI, the ID is generated from the BCC's chaincode, then the TID is sent to IDI via CA before finally going to the MF. Every record of the tobacco products will need to be chained with the given ID. The chaincode in the BCC keeps checking the number of tobaccos during the logistics. 7. Distributor (DI): A company buying a large number of tobacco products from the MF is known as a wholesaler. They are also sellers who sell products to retailers. 8. Logistics (LG): A company responsible for transporting the tobacco products. They mostly use trucks to transport the products. All products entering or leaving the transportation need to scan the logistics information via MR to BCC and chain it, for example, the ID, timestamp, and GPS location. 9. Retailer (RT): A shop or store selling the unit packet of tobacco products to the consumer. 10. Consumer (CS): An ordinary person that needs to buy tobacco products from the retailer. 11. Arbitrator (AB): An official agent that is able to use a mobile device with the Internet to find counterfeit or illegal tobacco products whether the tobacco products are in retailers, distributors, etc. 12. Auditors (AU): A third-party agency. If either party is unsure of the legal source of the tobacco products, the auditors have the right to prove if there are any problems in the logistics process. Figure 2 presents the scenarios that illustrate the process of tobacco products from the manufacturer to consumers through the distributor, retailer, and multiple logistics. There will be more than one manufacturer, distributor, retailer, and logistics in reality, so we used the basic elements to represent in this figure. A detailed description is as follows:  
1. All parties involved in the tobacco products logistics chain must register an account from the BCC to obtain a unique ID and a private and public key pair. 2. When the manufacturer needs to produce a batch of tobacco products, they need to apply to the IDI for the ID to every pack, batch, or any aggregation level of the tobacco products.