ST and SmardTech in collaboration

The smart card solution fully meets the technical requirements of the VDV (Association of German Transport Operators) Kernapplikation (KA) project to develop and establish a national e-ticketing technology standard. The ST19W secure contactless chip from STMicroelectronics, which is fully compliant with the ISO 14443 Type B standard and is Common Criteria (CC) EAL5+ certified, is the key to the success of the project. The chip integrates an RF UART for high-speed communication up to 848-kbps and a hardware cryptographic engine capable of handling secure transactions, digital signatures and other cryptographic algorithms at hardware level. Combined with low power consumption and a very good operating range, this secure chip is ideal for transport applications, and is capable of processing a typical transport transaction in less than 100ms. SmardTech's SmardOS operating system provides unparalleled capability for the most demanding applications. It is an efficient, dual-standard (ISO 14443 contactless, or ISO 7816 contact type) interface, object-oriented, multi-application and multi-tasking, secure operating system. It supports the most common cryptographic algorithms and schemes; is protected against typical smart card attacks such as logical and timing attacks, SPA, DPA, DFA, EMA and memory corruption; and is ready for Common Criteria security certification. The operating system supports instant application update, loading and removal. Working seamlessly with the ST19W secure contactless platform, SmardOS brings exceptional performance to the market for the most demanding e-ticketing applications. In Type B validation for the KA Test Karte project, a full transaction was executed in a remarkable time of less than 100ms at 424-kbps communication speed. More than 600 bytes were exchanged in the transaction, with 18 EEPROM updates completed through an anti-tearing protection mechanism and more than 90 DES/TDES CBC blocks ciphered. ST's most advanced 0.18-micron manufacturing technology is used for the ST19W, the reduced memory programming and erase times of the smaller geometry contributing to faster transactions. Increased memory size allows multiple applications to operate on the same card. STMicroelectronics has more than 20 years experience in the design of silicon products to the highest levels of security for a broad range of applications, and is a major manufacturer for the smartcard market. In 1997 ST produced the world's first contactless microprocessor. ST and SmardTech have collaborated since 2002, developing an innovative contactless smart card solution for the German VRR/VRS transit fare collection system, which resulted in the deployment of more than three million units.