NFC

What is NFC?

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a large-scope, multi-purpose concept that aim to federate various technologies enabling interactions between two electronic devices at short distance (< 10cm) .

The name NFC used to be closely linked to the ISO 14443 world (RFID communication using inductive coupling at 13.56MHz )

New actors (mobile phone operators mostly) focus on the usages and not on the techno : in its wider acceptance, NFC also covers UHF and SHF RFID, short-distance Bluetooh, 2D barcodes, etc ...

NFC Forum

NFC Forum is the organisation in charge of NFC standardization, it consists of over 140 members (silicon and phone manufacturers, applications developers, payment schemes, mobile operators, ...) Promotes the development of products using NFC technologies Educates consumers and companies globally about NFC.

NFC Forum has developped a set of specifications based on the ISO standards, that define :

• a modular architecture for NFC applications
• interoperability parameters for NFC protocols and devices
• a certification program to ensure that products labelled NFC-Forum will actually be interoperable

3 modes of operation

Reader mode

The NFC device behaves just as any other ISO 14443 contactless coupler (+ Felica, + ISO 15693, etc ), it can do everything a reader / writer can. RFID tags could be embedded in virtually anything; the NFC device (phone/smartphone/tablet/whatever) will perform appropriate action when reading one of them.

• Typical applications : smart poster, storage of WIFI or Bluetooth credentials, mobile card processing, etc.

Card emulation mode

The NFC device behaves like an existing ISO 14443 contactless smart card (+ Mifare, + Felica, + ISO 15693, + etc ... ) . This is the richest mode as it takes benefit of the existing reader infrastructures and offers multiple innovative use cases.

• Typical applications : transportation, payment

Peer-to-peer mode

Two NFC devices are communicating together and exchanging information :

• Business card,
• Peer-to-peer payment,
• Bluetooth pairing,
• etc ...

NFC with our SpringCard devices

SpringCard's readers can be used as an NFC device, operating in the Reader mode described above. Take a look at the list of our readers to find out which one is the most suited to your project.

Our readers support Type 1, 2 and 4 NFC Tags. The only NFC type tag unsupported is Type 3, which represents Sony Felica cards. Felica compliance is possible, just not implemented at the moment.

Our NFC applications

NFC Tool NFC Tool is a desktop application (Windows) to encode and read common NFC tags. NFC Tool works with PC/SC readers ( Prox'N'Roll, CrazyWriter or CSB6 namely). Easily read and write NFC content in your cards using NFC Tool : Choose between SmartPoster, Text or URI ; fill in your URL or Text ; encode it to generate the NDEF and write it to your card. At the date of writing, NFC Tool supports the following tags : - MIFARE Classic cards (standard 1K/4K) as NFC Type 2 tags ; - MIFARE UltraLight (MF0ICU1) and UltraLight C (MF0ICU2) cards as NFC Type 2 tags ; - TOPAZ by Innovision cards as NFC Type 1 tags. Source code is available in the PC/SC SDK (requires the .NET framework, written in C#).

NFC Decoder NFC Decoder is an application that allows you to open an URL from an NFC tag card. NFC Decoder for Windows Mobile (Pocket PC) works with either SpringProx-CF, SpringProx-CF UP or SpringWAP through SpringProx API. NFC Decoder for Windows XP/7 works with PC/SC readers ( Prox'N'Roll, CrazyWriter or CSB6 namely). It supports MIFARE 1K, MIFARE 4K and MIFARE UltraLight or UltraLight C as NFC Type 2 tags. Source code is available in the PC/SC SDK (requires the .NET framework, written in C#).

Learn more

• Register for a training on NFC.