A variable power divider and method can vary the RF power between ports in a high power and multi-carrier RF environment, such as is used in controlling signals sent and received in a base station antenna. The method also includes, using a clock signal, sampling the output signal to generate a plurality of data values and boundary values, each value comprising either a high value or a low value based on the sampling of the output signal. The taggant is then analyzed by XRF and the analysis is then converted into a 2D symbol format that can be used in various security and authentication applications.