Infineon MCUs speed up passport control

An Infineon Technologies product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Mar 6, 2009

Infineon Technologies has announced it is supplying the contactless security microcontrollers for India's electronic-passport programme.

This programme began by issuing electronic passports to Indian diplomats and officials.

It is expected up to thirty thousand electronic passports will be issued in this first phase.

By September 2009, the programme is likely to be expanded to include passports used by the public.

The India electronic passport project utilises the SLE 66CLX800PE security microcontroller from Infineon, which was specifically designed for use in electronic passports, identity cards, e-government cards and payment cards.

The microcontroller securely stores the information printed on the passport.

It features a crypto-coprocessor and can operate at high transaction speeds of up to 848 kbits/s, even if elevated encryption and decryption operations have to be calculated.

The passports allow automatic identity verification, fast immigration inspections and efficient border protection and security.

The SLE 66CLX800PE offers all contactless proximity interfaces on a single chip: the ISO/IEC 14443 Type B interface and Type A interface, which are both used for communication between electronic passports and the respective readers; and the ISO/IEC 18092 passive mode interface, which is used in transport and banking applications, mainly in Japan.

The SLE 66CLX800PE complies with global ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) standards for electronic passports.

It features 80 kilobytes (kb) of EEPROM, 240kb of ROM and 6kb of RAM.

With its tailored set of EEPROM/ROM and RAM memory sizes, the SLE 66CLX800PE adheres to the ICAO requirements for the secure storage of the biometric and personal data in travel documents.

The SLE 66PE contactless controller family, which includes the SLE 66CLX800PE, is certified according to Common Criteria EAL 5+ high (BSI-PP-0002 protection profile) security certification.

These microcontrollers build on underlying hardware-based integral security, with data encryption, memory firewall system and other security mechanisms to safeguard the privacy of data.

The SLE 66PE product family comprises a whole product portfolio designed for use in basic-security to high-security smart-card systems, with EEPROM sizes ranging from 4kb to 144kb and covering different applications including government ID, transportation and payment.