Smartcards and Secure Elements

This chapter presents key technologies related to smartcards and secure elements (SEs), especially as they relate to the wireless systems. It outlines the available and future alternatives for traditional and enhanced variants of smartcards. Smartcards represent a type of SE hardware. Examples of solutions for providing SEs are the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM), Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC), eSE, and external micro Secure Digital (SD) cards. Smartcards can be categorized by their physical characteristics such as contact and contactless variants, and by their functionality such as memory cards, Central Processing Unit (CPU) or Multi Processing Unit (MPU) cards with embedded OS, multi‐mode communications cards and hybrid cards. Smartcards can be divided into sub‐categories to distinguish between contact cards, contactless cards and multi‐component cards. The UICC communications are based on secure channels which ensure the secure communication between the smartcard and external world.