SMART CARD READER

A personal computer (PC)-based smart card reader designed to accept both synchronous and asynchronous smart cards is described in this paper. This is a low-cost software-based product compared to the existing commercially available hardware-based reader. This is achieved by making use of the hardware resources of the PC and dedicated software drivers to control the communication protocol between the smart card and the reader, replacing the microprocessor used as an intermediate interface in the existing reader. The reader described in this paper is linked to the PC via the standard parallel port. The PC-based smart card reader consists of 3 modules. The first is the hardware to serve as the physical interface between the smart card and the PC. The second module is the software driver interface between the smart card and the PC while the third module is the application program. Application of smart cards include, among others, public telephone cards, access card for subscribers for cable TV, multi-function card for country club membership; for physical access and also doubles as credit storage cards and personal data storage cards, personal data file for medical data, bank card, student card, electronic voting card, smart key, dialysis card, cinema card, and state lottery card [1].