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This paper discusses commonly used reverse engineering methods to illegally recreate printed circuit board (PCB) designs. A solution using transformative electronics is presented to prevent the discussed reverse engineering methods by obfuscating the design. The transformative electronics solution is employed in a specific application that results in a reverse engineered board to be incorrectly recreated, where the signals would be distorted due to added electromagnetic interference (EMI). The nonconductive vias that are part of the obfuscation would allow the inclusion of EMI generators that would not affect the circuit in an original design but would prevent copied designs from working correctly. A machine learning algorithm is being designed to optimize the placement of the EMI sources in an original PCB.

The INFN group of Rome is developing two silicon microstrip detector planes to be part of the tracking system of the SBS spectrometer, that will be installed in the experimental Hall A of Jefferson Labortatory, in order to improve its resolution. The detector and the PCB design were the results of models simulated using PSPICE. The entire assembly process will be realized in the INFN Roma clean room CL10000 facility.