Fingerprint recognition technology has been around for many decades but has not been prevalent to today’s society until recent advances made this idea practical and easy to implement in current mobile devices. Fingerprint recognition is the latest trend in biometric technology, providing companies with a more secure, easy to use, and faster way to access your devices. NXP hit the nail on the head with its recent release of the LPC51U68 MCU that uses its enhanced processing power, power efficiency, and flexible interfaces to provide companies with the perfect tool to dominate the biometrics market place.
The LPC51U68 uses the highly energy-efficient Arm
Cortex-M0+ core to operate at a CPU frequency of up to 100MHz which is more than 2 times faster than other -M0+ competition who only operate at maximum speeds of 48MHz. This higher execution speed helps process the complex operations needed to effectively run fingerprint recognition algorithms to make the user experience faster.
Figure 1: LPC51U68 Fingerprint
This 32-bit MCU features larger memory resources including 96 KB of on-chip SRAM and 256 KB of on-chip flash programming memory with a flash accelerator. While providing excellent computing power, the LPC51U68 still keeps ultra-low-power consumption having an active current of 75µA/MHz @3.3V with a 48MHz frequency which is 6 times less compared to the nearest competitor that provides similar performance, memory resources and integration.
In addition to all the advanced performance/power features, the new MCU also integrates a rich and flexible peripheral interface to improve connectivity and integration. The microcontroller supports four low-power modes and API-driven power profiles, providing developers with easy-to-use dynamic current management at runtime and fast wake-up times from the microcontroller’s reduced power modes which is perfect for quick interrupt wake-up in finger auto-detection. NXP’s LPC51U68 microcontroller also features unparalleled design flexibility and integration including a USB 2.0 full-speed device controller supporting crystal-less operations, eight flexible serial communication peripherals, each of which can be enabled as UART, SPIs or I2-C interfaces. Two of flexcomm interfaces also support an I2-C interfaces, for a total of 2 channel pairs.
The multiple interfaces, low-power consumption, and high performance make the LCP51U68 the optimal choice in the current biometric technology trend. Fingerprint recognition is only one of many applications the LPC MCU family is used for. The LPC51U68 supports a wide variety of applications where a high-performance yet power conscious environment is required like with high-end gaming keyboard/mice, industrial grade USB to serial port bridge, E-meter, USB audio device, and much more.
As keys and passwords become a thing of the past, biometrics are paving the way of future technology recognition and security. With so much room to grow, where do you think the future of biometric technology will take us? For more information about NXP’s new LPC51U68, check out the overview and additional information on NXP’s website here.
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