Magnetic stripe reader

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-8985449-B2
Application number	US-201213610103-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 11, 2012
Priority date	Sep 11, 2012
Publication date	Mar 24, 2015
Grant date	Mar 24, 2015

Abstract

The invention relates to a magnetic stripe reader, and more particularly, to systems, devices and methods of directly extracting binary information embedded in a magnetic stripe using simple analog and digital signal processing techniques. Once information stored in the magnetic stripe is extracted as a F-2F waveform by the magnetic stripe reader, peaks, valleys and mid-level transition points between every consecutive peak and valley are detected. A peak-to-peak period and an average time are directly derived to determine whether the corresponding peak-to-peak transition is associated with a binary bit of “1” or “0”. This magnetic stripe reader spares a need for a multi-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and a large memory, and thus, constitutes a simple and self-contained solution that may read out the binary information stored on the magnetic stripe with reduced power consumption and improved cost efficiency.

First claim

We claim:

1. A magnetic stripe reader, comprising:
a stripe interface, coupled to generate a F-2F waveform from binary information stored in a magnetic card;
a zero-cross detector, coupled to the stripe interface, the zero-cross detector detecting a plurality of zero cross events when the F-2F waveform crosses a mid-level transition point located between each adjacent peak and valley pair;
a peak detector, coupled to the stripe interface, the peak detector generating a peak de…

Assignees

• Weldele Mark Henry
• Kwak Sung Ung
• Zanders Gary Vernon
• Maxim Integrated Products

Inventors

• Weldele Mark Henry
• Kwak Sung Ung
• Zanders Gary Vernon

Classifications

• G11B5/00808

  Physics · mapped topic

• G11B5/09

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06K7/084 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G11B20/10

  Physics · mapped topic