Information Technology

Standards

NFC was approved as an ISO/IEC standard on December 8, 2003 and later as an ECMA standard.

NFC is an open platform technology standardized in ECMA-340 and ISO/IEC 18092. These standards specify the modulation schemes, coding, transfer speeds and frame format of the RF interface of NFC devices, as well as initialization schemes and conditions required for data collision-control during initialization-for both passive and active NFC modes. Furthermore, they also define the transport protocol, including protocol activation and data-exchange methods. Air interface for NFC is standardized in: ISO/IEC 18092 / ECMA-340 : Near Field Communication Interface and Protocol-1 (NFCIP-1) ^[3] ISO/IEC 21481 / ECMA-352 : Near Field Communication Interface and Protocol-2 (NFCIP-2)^[4]

NFC incorporates a variety of pre-existing standards including ISO/IEC 14443 both Type A (normal) and Type B (banking/short range), and FeliCa. NFC enabled phones thus show basic interoperability with the preexisting reader infrastructure. Especially in "card emulation mode" a NFC device should at least transmit a unique ID number to a pre-existing reader.

In addition, NFC Forum has defined a common data format called NDEF, which can be used to store and transport different kinds of items, ranging from any MIME-typed object to ultra-short RTD-documents, such as URLs.

NDEF is conceptually very similar to MIME. It is a dense binary format of so-called "records", in which each record can hold a different type of object. By convention, the type of the first record defines the context of the entire message.

[edit] NFC Forum

The Forum is a non-profit industry association announced on March 18, 2004 by NXP Semiconductors, Sony and Nokia to advance the use of NFC short-range wireless interaction in consumer electronics, mobile devices and PCs. The NFC Forum promotes implementation and standardization of NFC technology to ensure interoperability between devices and services. In September 2008, there were over 150 members of the NFC Forum.

[edit] GSMA

The GSM Association (GSMA) is the global trade association representing 700 mobile phone operators across 218 countries of the world.

They have launched two initiatives:

• the Mobile NFC initiative: fourteen mobile network operators, who together represent 40% of the global mobile market back NFC and are working together to develop NFC applications. They are Bouygues Télécom, China Mobile, AT&T, KPN, Mobilkom Austria, Orange, SFR, SK Telecom, Telefonica Móviles España, Telenor, TeliaSonera, Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM), Vodafone and 3^[5]

On 13 February 2007, they published a white paper on NFC to give the point of view of mobile operators on the NFC ecosystem.^[6]

• the Pay buy mobile initiative seeks to define a common global approach to using Near Field Communications (NFC) technology to link mobile devices with payment and contactless systems.^[7][8] To date, 30 mobile operators have joined this initiative.

[edit] StoLPaN

StoLPaN (‘Store Logistics and Payment with NFC’) is a pan-European consortium supported by the European Commission’s Information Society Technologies program. StoLPaN will examine the as yet untapped potential for bringing together the new kind of local wireless interface, NFC and mobile communication.

[edit] Other standardization bodies

Other standardization bodies that are involved in NFC include:

• ETSI / SCP (Smart Card Platform) to specify the interface between the SIM card and the NFC chipset.
• GlobalPlatform to specify a multi-application architecture of the secure element.
• EMVCo for the impacts on the EMV payment applications.