Pressure-Sensitive Fingerprint Imaging

The sensor comprises a sensitive membrane patterned with conductive leads and a base layer that senses when contact is made with those conductive leads.

The sensor is mechanical and inherently binary in nature: When a fingerprint makes contact with the sensor surface, the sensitive membrane conforms to the fingerprint geometry, registering black pixels at ridges and white pixels at valleys.

Therefore, Fidelica's technology is similar to the familiar ink-and-roll fingerprint technique that has been standard practice for decades.

Benefits:

The unique manner in which the Fidelica fingerprint sensor creates images leads to several distinct benefits:

    
• The pressure-based fingerprint sensing technology images to the highest degree regardless of finger moisture conditions. Fingerprints can be fully wet, oily, or overly dry, and will still image properly. Liquids are simply pushed out of the way when pressing and cause no interference.
    
• The binary area-based fingerprint image results in reduced computational overhead in fingerprint matching. Rather than 8 bits per pixel, as is standard for a grayscale device, the Fidelica fingerprint sensor generates only 1 bit per pixel, for a total image size of 8.0KB.