SMART SD CARD AND METHOD OF ACCESSING THE SAME

• US 20100205373A1
• Filed: 03/04/2010
• Published: 08/12/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/06/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: China Unionpay Company Limited
• Original Assignee: China Unionpay Company Limited
• Inventors: Meng, Hongwen, Hu, Jia, He, Shuo
• Granted Patent: US 8,285,899 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 711/115
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/35 communicating wirelessly
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/74 operating in dual or compartmented mode, i.e. at least one secure mode
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/79 in semiconductor storage media, e.g. directly-addressable memories
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 19/07 with integrated circuit chips
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 19/07732 the record carrier having a housing or construction similar to well-known portable memory devices, such as SD cards, USB or memory sticks housings for electrical equipment in general, see H05K5/02

Abstract

A smart SD card and a method of accessing the same are disclosed, which resolve a problem of incompatibilities between drivers of various smart SD cards. The smart SD card includes a SD interface (201), a SD memory (203), a smart card (204) and a SD controller (202). The method of accessing the SD card includes: an application program performing a write operation on the smart card interface file and notifying the SD controller establishing a communication connection with the smart card; the application program reading the interface file and receiving response data returned by the smart card via the SD controller; the establishing of the connection being successful, the application program writing the smart card operation commands into the interface file, and the SD controller forwarding the commands to the smart card; the application program reading the interface file and receiving response data returned by the smart card via the SD controller.

Claims

1. A smart SD card, including:

SD interface, for providing an access interface for peripheral devices in the manner of file system, wherein a smart card interface file is set in the file system;

SD memory, for providing the storage space;

smart card, for providing application service; and

SD controller, for identifying an operation to the file system from the peripheral devices, and accessing to the smart card if the operation directing to the smart card interface file, otherwise, accessing to the SD memory.

2. The smart SD card of claim 1, wherein the SD controller interprets the writing operation to the smart card interface file from the peripheral device as sending command to the smart card, and interprets the reading operation as receiving response data returned by the smart card.

3. The smart SD card of claim 1, wherein the smart card interface file is stored in a root directory of the file system with 0 byte length, and the feature of the interface file is set as hide.

4. The smart SD card of claim 1, wherein the smart card provides the interface for communicating with the SD controller.

5. The smart SD card of claim 1, further includes a near field non-contact chip connected with the smart card, for providing near field non-contact access to the smart card.

6. A method for accessing to the smart SD card, including:

an application procedure executing the writing operation to a smart card interface file, to inform a SD controller of establishing communication with a smart card;

the application procedure reading the interface file and receiving response data returned by the smart card through the SD controller;

the application procedure writing the smart card operation command into the interface file and the SD controller forwarding the commands to the smart card, when the connection is established successfully; and

the application reading the interface file and receiving the response data returned by the smart card through the SD controller.

7. The method of claim 6, further includes:

the SD controller records the communication status with the smart card and returns it to the application procedure, and the application procedure continues to read and write the smart card interface file if the communication status is normal.

8. The method of claim 6, further includes:

the application procedure writes a tag of each operation into the interface file, and reads the tag when reading file; and

determines whether the written tag matches the read tag, if mismatching, a fault tolerant process is executed.

9. The method of claim 6, wherein the application procedure receives the response data returned by the smart card as follows:

the smart card returning the command response information to the SD controller, and the SD controller identifying the command response information;

if the SD controller identifying that there is data returned, the SD controller automatically sending obtaining command to obtain the response data; and

the application procedure reading and obtaining, when the SD controller having received all of the response data.

10. The method of claim 6, wherein the application procedure receives the response data returned by the smart card according to the following steps:

the smart card returning the command response information to the SD controller, and the SD controller directly buffering the command response information for the application procedure reading;

the application procedure identifying the command response information, and obtaining command is sent by the SD controller if identifying there is data returned; and

according to the obtaining command, the smart card returning response data to the SD controller for the application procedure reading.