TrustedBio is accelerating the biometric card market as the only bio-lingual sensor able to converse with both BioSEs and standard SEs
By Guido Bertocci, VP, Software Engineering
TrustedBio is accelerating the biometric card market as the only bio-lingual sensor able to converse with both BioSEs and standard SEs. It has become clear that mass adoption of biometric cards requires significantly reduced costs and simplified manufacturing. The extra MCU, power management/energy harvesting circuits, and the expensive active inlay must be eliminated. There are two options. Option A, move the “other stuff” functionality into a BioSE with a faster MCU, more memory, and ability to harvest energy or option B move the “other stuff” into the sensor.
Today, there is only one BioSE, developed by Idemia/Zwipe who have selected IDEX TrustedBio. While there will eventually be other BioSEs, it may be quite some time before they are available.
Card manufacturers have a dilemma. They want to start designing low cost Gen3 cards today. They don’t want to wait for the next generation of BioSEs. As a bio-lingual sensor, TrustedBio has solved this problem by giving our partners the flexibility to design low cost cards with either a BioSE or a standard SE.
TrustedBio is IDEX’s low cost 3rd generation off-chip sensor, developed using an advanced 40nm mixed signal, analog and digital technology. It has a very small but very fast ARM processor with plenty of memory, advanced power management and energy harvesting capabilities and a new fast and very power efficient fingerprint scan engine. It is very secure, supporting AES256 encryption. It has a large 90 mm2 sensor, 2.5 times larger than silicon sensors, providing better biometric performance and a much better customer experience from enrollment to daily use.
Moreover, TrustedBio is less expensive than silicon sensors when paired with a BioSE and provides a much less expensive solution when paired with a standard SE.
TrustedBio is unique. We can quickly optimize products for our partners without incurring the cost and time of developing a new sensor. TrustedBio can be configured to provide an encrypted image to a BioSE or when paired with a standard SE, execute most of the biometric processing sending via an encrypted link the extracted features to the SE for a secure match. It can also provide all the energy harvesting and power management. The flexibility of our solution enables card manufacturers to continue to use their “tried and true” SE supply chain and allows them many ways to differentiate from their competitors.
Given the multiple design wins with both BioSEs and standard SEs and the tremendous interest in TrustedBio from major card manufacturers and SE companies we believe that our bio-lingual highly configurable sensor strategy is the winning strategy.
The first TrustedBio sensors were shipped to partners in August. Joint development, card integration and testing is progressing expeditiously. We have received initial volume production orders. Pilots with TrustedBio are expected in the next few months, with certifications and product ramps starting 1Q 2021. The biometric card market is about to explode and TrustedBio will accelerate the adoption.
