During the NFC Congress 2009 in Hagenberg, AUT (24 - 26th Feburary 2009) the will be a special developer day explicitly dealing with Software and Hardware for Near Field Communication (NFC).

Together with the Forum Nokia Team we will host a Developer Training using the new Nokia 6212 SDK and show how easy it is build or own NFC applications from scratch. The developer Training will also deal with developing secure applications with JavaCard OS and GlobalPlatform and how to put them onto the secure element or the UICC in the 6212.

Besides the developer day, there is also a scientific IEEE Workshop on NFC (Februray 24th) as well as a Business Track on February 26th. The preliminary programme is already online.

You are complaining that there are to few NFC phones on the market? Well here is an idea, on how to do that yourself:

This actually also was the idea of six students at our University in Hagenberg, studying Embedded Systems Design. They decided to head for a project where they are integrating NFC technology in the open-source mobile phone “Neo-Runner” (aka Open-Moko). Therefore during the summer holidays already a prototype using the Open-Moko and the OpenPCD has been used to gain RFID Functionality on the phone.

The project is run under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Josef Langer, who is also Head of the NFC Research Lab in Hagenberg. The overall Goal of the project is to implement a reference design for an NFC device. Thus there are several challenges to overcome

1. Of course, connect the NFC-Controller somehow to the phone. This wasn’t a big issue, as the phone has a I2C interface, that allowed us to connect NXP’s NFC Reference Board using a serial connection.
2. Secondly we do need a driver for talking to the Reference board. This is currently work in progress. Also the students are currently dealing with the antenna design for the device.
3. Upcoming challenges are the redesign of the hardware to fit into the tiny slot above the SIM-Card into the back of the mobile as well as integrating the antenna into the device. The Reference design also includes a connector to the UICC using the Single Wire Protocol (SWP).

The project is now up and running for 8 weeks and we are hopefully able to present the first prototype at the NFC Congress 2009 in Hagenberg. I’ll keep you posted on the progress of this project. In case this project turns out to be a successfully intergration, the next device we are heading for is the N810, as it is also based on Linux ;-)

Serial Connector smoothly integrated into the back of the phone 

NFC Hardware using the I2C Interface of the phone.

OpenMoko Reading a Mifare Card

Recently I wrote an article an NFC architecture and how to integrated into a mobile device. Today I'd like to show by the re-engineering the Nokia 3220 NFC, how such an implemented could look like.

The Nokia 3220 actually was the first "real" NFC phone from my point of view, as it was capable of all three operating modes: card-emulation, reader/writer & peer-2-peer. The phone was issued in 2005 and came with a special shell that included the NFC functionality. There was also the 5140 that came with an RFID shell, but that model only supported the reader/writer mode.

The NFC functionally is not integrated into the handset itself, but comes in a separate shell. The shell communicates with the handset through a 5-pin connector.

Inside the shell there is a PCB that holds an NFC-Chip from NXP (a PN511) and the secure element (SmartMX). There is also a microprocessor which seams to handle the communication between the NFC Chip and the handset.

If found a picture for the hole system here.

NFC Operating Modes

Reader/Writer Mode: Operating in this mode, the NFC device can read and alter data stored in NFC compliant passive (without battery) transponders. Such tags can be found on SmartPoster e. g., allowing the user to retrieve additional information by reading the tag with the NFC device. Depending on the data stored on the tag, the NFC device takes an appropriate action without any user interaction. If a URI was found on the tag, the handset would open a web browser for example.

Card Emulation: An NFC device can also act as smart card (ISO 14443) after being switched into card emulation mode. In this case an external reader cannot distinguish between a smart card and an NFC device. This mode is useful for contactless payment and ticketing applications for example. Actually, an NFC enable handset is capable of storing different contactless smartcard applications in one device.

Peer-to-Peer: The NFC peer-to-peer mode (ISO 18092) allows two NFC enabled devices to establish a bidirectional connection to exchange contacts, Bluetooth pairing information or any other kind of data ISO18092. Cumbersome pairing processes are a thing of the past thanks to NFC technology. To establish a connection a client (NFC peer-to-peer initiator) is searching for a host (NFC peer-to-peer target) to setup a connection. Then the NDEF (NFC Data Exchange Format) is used to transmit the data.