A Single-Line AC Capacitive Fingerprint Swipe Sensor

In this chapter we describe a single-line AC capacitive fingerprint swipe sensor. We focus on the basic working principle of a swipe sensor, namely, the fact that the user has to swipe his or her finger across the sensor surface to acquire a fingerprint image. Thus, an image reconstruction algorithm is needed in order to produce properly scaled fingerprint images taking into account varying swiping speeds and directions. We describe an image reconstruction algorithm that effectively compares time signals from two sets of sensor elements in order to calculate the speed and direction of the moving finger. The single-line AC capacitive swipe sensor produces high-quality fingerprint images suitable for any recognition algorithm allowing for translational and rotational degrees of freedom. The integrated touchpad functionality is an additional feature of the sensor capable of reducing the number of buttons needed on small handheld devices.