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Portable or embedded access and input devices and methods for giving access to access limited devices, apparatuses, appliances, systems or networks

  • US 20040123113A1
  • Filed: 12/18/2002
  • Published: 06/24/2004
  • Est. Priority Date: 12/18/2002
  • Status: Abandoned Application
First Claim
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1. Portable access device for being coupled to, and for allowing only authorized users access to, an access-limited apparatus, device, network or system, e.g. a computer terminal, an internet bank or a corporate or government intranet comprising a device interface, being electronic or mechanical or both, for coupling the device to the access-limited unit, e.g. a computer terminal port, characterized by an integrated circuit (IC) (1) providing increased security by bridging the functionality of fingerprint input from a user and, upon positive authentication of the user'"'"'s fingerprint to provide secure communication with the said access-limited apparatus, device, network or system, said IC comprising:

  • a processor unit (2) communicating with the other on-chip components via a high speed bus (3), a first memory interface block (6B or 6D) being connected to the high speed bus (3) for interfacing with volatile memory (6A or 6C) as thus providing working memory available to other modules on the IC (1), a second memory interface block (7B or 7D) being connected to the high speed bus (3) for interfacing with non-volatile memory (7A or 7 or 7E), for storing of program code, e.g. administrative software, tailored security output responses and fingerprint representations in the form of so-called fingerprint minutiae, a first interface block (5A) for being coupled to a fingerprint sensor (5) said first interface block (5A) is connected to an image capture and pre-processing block (5C), said image capture and pre-processing block (5C) is adapted to perform the initial heavy-duty processing of the raw fingerprint images captured from the sensor (5) into a dataset of reduced size, denoted intermediate fingerprint data, the intermediate fingerprint data being submitted as output to the central processor block (2) via the high speed bus (3) for final processing to compact fingerprint representations by so-called minutiae, on the central processor (2), encryption modules (8 or 8A, 8B and 8C) connected to the high-speed bus (3) for providing encryption information, or alternatively scrambling information, the processor unit (2) is adapted to apply the encryption information to the fingerprint data for producing secured data as an output to the high speed bus (3) and one or more second interface blocks (9A, 9B, 9C or 9D) for supplying the secured data to the external access-limited apparatus, device or system via the device interface.

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