A new contactless smartcard IC using an on-chip antenna and an asynchronous micro-controller

A new generation of Contactless Smartcard Chip is described. The Contactless Smartcard Chip integrates an on-chip coil connected to a power reception system and an emitter/receiver module compatible with the ISO 14443 standard, together with an asynchronous Quasi Delay Insensitive (QDI) 8-bit micro-controller. Beyond the contactless smartcard application field, this new chip demonstrates that System-on-Chip integrating power reception and management, radio-frequency communication and signal processing are feasible. The chip associates analog/digital parts as well as synchronous/asynchronous logics and has been fabricated in a CMOS 6 metal layers .25µm technology from STMicroelectronics.