At the recent SID convention, Samsung Electronics cooperated with the German company Bundesdruckerei, to demonstrate an electronic passport. It contains an AMOLED display that can be used to present a variety of content, including text and video. I find this e-passport be an especially excellent example of the new class of products enabled by this new class of display.

Art Berman
Insight Media Consultant

The thin, bendable display consumes so little power that it operates on RF energy provided by a contactless reader. This means that the e-passport does not require batteries. In the absence of a signal from the RFID reader, the display does not show an image. When the passport is placed within about 4-inches of the reader, the RFID module automatically powers up. In the demo, the display presented a rotating image of the passport holder.

An interesting video illustrating the operation of the e-passport display is available on-line at URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYMTFDydhNs&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oled-info.com%2Fmore-details-samsungs-oled-e-passort-prototype&feature=player_embedded

Properties of the 2-inch display include:

• QVGA 240×320 resolution
• 260,000 colors
• Color gamut >NTSC
• Contrast ratio of 10,000:1
• Luminance of 200 cd/m2

A US electronic passport has been in development for about six years and will be the first complete passport redesign since 1993. In the proposed U.S. e-passport, the RFID chip will be located on a polycarbonate data page in the back of the passport. The chip can hold much more information about a person than can a conventional paper passport or a biometric document.

Since not all locations will have an RFID reader, the e-passport will still include a normal picture.

According to the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, the digital passport photograph will also facilitate the use of face recognition technology at ports-of-entry and exits across America.

All of the materials in the display are heat resistant and the entire page can be laminated. This should make the e-passport tamper resistant and, thus, difficult to counterfeit. There are still concerns, however, about including confidential information in electronic form in any document. This is due to the not unreasonable concern that means may eventually be developed that allow the document to be hacked.

To address this point, other anti-fraud and security features are also included in the e-passport such as shielding material in the cover and the use of Basic Access Control to prevent unauthorized access of personal information.

At this time, it is uncertain if and when e-passports will go into volume production. However…based on the current advanced state of development of this and other e-paper technologies, and the fact that it offers display capabilities that are both new and clearly useful, our bet is that this display technology will be successfully commercialized in a wide variety of innovative products. Insight Media is currently looking into the e-passport and related markets and will issue a report on it later this summer.