The BioP@ss project

The BioP@ss project targets the development of advanced (microelectronics and embedded SW) secure and interoperable smart card platforms for all needed e-administrative applications requested at European level (e-identity, but also e-health, Residence Permit,...). It will leverage on the results of the former Onom@Topic+ MEDEA+ project and especially reuse the open middleware architecture proposed by the Consortium partners and currently under approval by some standardization committees.

The prime applications targeted by the project are e-identity cards based on the European Citizenship Card (ECC) family of standards currently under finalization at the CEN, and the next generation of Electronic Passports / Residence Permit, in view of complying with the EU requirements that should come in force by end 2009. The BioP@ss consortium supports the approach of the European Citizen Card (ECC) which combines the benefits of standardization with the required flexibility to adopt to national requirements by introducing individual ECC-profiles. A specific goal of the project will be to make all efforts that solution components that will be generated in BioP@ss will comply to the ECC profiles that represent the French and the German implementation of the eID-card. It is nevertheless expected that the project application fields could cover other areas such as electronic health, electronic voting or electronic Residence Permit...

The project will capitalize of the former Onom@Topic+ HW and embedded results, and more especially on all the proofs of concept achieved so far in the area of advanced contactless interfaces ([VHDR], NFC,..), embedded biometric components, advanced modeling techniques, embedded [IAS] SW platforms. It will however introduce several key new technology elements, such as:

• Contactless Power and Hard bricks optimization
• Definition and standardization to extend 14443 contact-less interface protocol beyond 1Mb/s
• New cryptographic blocks and Protocol as PBM for better privacy
• Advanced Match on Card [MOC] biometric techniques eg. BIO PIN MoC
• SW embedded privacy
• Embedded SW platforms enabling plug and play connection between an [IAS] based platform and a TCP/IP architecture or ECC3 Web Serveur; this will open the way for innovative use cases based on government platforms and enabling private/public partnership.