Infineon Technologies announced that it is the supplier of contactless security microcontrollers for India’s electronic passport program. The rollout has started with the issuance of e-passports to Indian diplomats and officials, with 30,000 expected to be issued.
By September 2009, the program is likely to be expanded to include passports used by the general public. Approximately 6 million passports are being issued annually in India.
The India electronic passport project utilizes the SLE 66CLX800PE security microcontroller from Infineon and was specifically designed for use in electronic passports, identity cards, e-government cards and payment cards. The security microcontroller 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 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.
In addition to India, Infineon supplies its security microcontrollers to many other countries for use in e-passports including the U.S., Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Hong Kong, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Ivory Coast. ![[end]](/resources/bullet/secureidnews-4.gif)
