Smart Card

Smart Card Tutorial - Part 1 First Published in September 1992 Introduction To Smart Cards Even the name Smart Card captures the imagination, however such a term is ambiguous and is used in many different ways. ISO uses the term, Integrated Circuit Card (ICC) to encompass all those devices where an integrated circuit is contained within an ISO 1 identification card piece of plastic. The card is 85.6mm x 53.98mm x 0.76mm and is the same as the ubiquitous bank card with its magnetic stripe that is used as the payment instrument for numerous financial schemes. Integrated Circuit Cards come in two forms, contact and contactless. The former is easy to identify because of its gold connector plate (fig 1). Although the ISO Standard (7816-2) defined eight contacts, only 6 are actually used to communicate with the outside World. The Contactless card may contain its own battery, particulary in the case of a "Super Smart Card" which has an integrated keyboard and LCD display. In general however the operating power is supplied to the contactless card electronics by an inductive loop using low frequency electronic magnetic radiation. The communications signal may be transmitted in a similar way or can use capacitive coupling or even an optical connection.

Figure 1: ISO ID 1Card

The Contact Card is the most commonly seen ICC to date largely because of its use in France and now other parts of Europe as a telephone prepayment card.. Most contact cards contain a simple integrated circuit although various experiments have taken place using two chips. The chip itself varies considerably between different manufacturers and for a whole gambit of applications. Let us consider first the purpose for the 6 contacts used by the ICC (fig 2)

Figure 2: ISO 7816-2 Connector Vcc is the supply voltage that drives the chips and is generally 5 volts. It should be noted however that in the future we are likely to see a move towards 3 volts taking advantage of advanced semiconductor