MIFARE

NFC Technology & Silica contribution to the market 23. January 2013
By dimac

In April 2009, at the opening keynote of the 3rd annual WIMA conference, held at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco, Nokia announced its third fully integrated Near Field Communication (NFC) device, the Nokia 6216 classic. This was Nokia’s first SIM-based NFC device which enabled operators to build NFC services on to the SIM card. The purpose was to support consumers to benefit from greater ease of use, more convenient sharing of content – such as images, weblinks, audio files or contact data – as well as secure payment and ticketing transactions, all with just one tap of the device.

NFC was developed to address the contactless standards dilemma. NFC is a technology standard that harmonizes and extends existing contactless standards and get more and more acceptance into mobile phone market. Now-a-day you find support for Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Windows smart phones.

Silica as a preferred distributor for NXP RFID – NFC part of it – products recognized the importance and penetration of NFC technology in our day-to-day life. With NXP support, know-how and deep experience in this technology, Silica presented in 2010 the Sreiz I board – followed by Seriz II board in 2012 – a development board to help customer on reducing time-to-market for infrastructure equipment – also NFC readers. The opportunity lies in the development and production of reader technology, access control equipment and everything that goes beyond the tag or the IP integrated into an RFID enabled equipment. Silica SERIZ board enables easy, fast and secure development of RFID &  NFC applications, by supporting customers with a full hardware and software package.
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Taking advantage of NXP PN512 – reader IC – features, customer may develop his own RFID reader equipment  from the simple mode of reading the UID of a Mifare tag (ISO14443) up to data exchange over the peer-to-peer communication (NFC – ISO18092) path.  Silica SERIZ board support customers in developing also high security application by using a SAM (Secure Access Module) in a SIM card format. More information regarding the features of SERIZ board , customer can find on Silica web page under:http://www.silica.com/products/highlight/product/silica-seriz-board-for-rfidnfc-applications.html

Seriz Board is so flexible to support a wide range of applications and it was the choice for Cardolution RFID business card reader solution, which was developed together with NXP, Bluetechnix and Smartrac Technology Dresden with Silica as backer and supporter of the project. A RFID business card looks like a normal paper business card, but it contains a RFID transponder used to store digitally the information printed on it. This make very easy the exchange information, which can be read in less than a second with your PC, using an USB reader stick or via a Smartphone equipped with NFC technology.The data in the cards is stored in the standardized vCard software, which is compatible with many application, as the popular Windows Outlook. Cards coming for Cardolution have a  ISO 7810 ID-1 physical size, the standard for credit cards  (85,60mm x 53,98mm).

The inlay in the cards is made by Smartrac Technology Dresden, a worldwide high quality RFID supplier and it’s based on NXP Mifare Classic 1k chip. Cardabra Stick, the NFC USB Stick, was designed by Bluetechnix Mechatronische Systeme GmbH , a Wien based design house company, using Seriz as reference design, featuring a NXP PN512 NFC Transceiver and Cortex M3 LPC1765.
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Benefits

• Saving time by electronic storage of the business card

• Avoiding errors when importing data

• Guaranteeing homogenous storage – using a standardized format

YOU DON’T need to install any software – this USB stick is acting as a hard driver, but you must have Windows Outlook installed on your computer.

  1. Just plug the stick into one of the available USB slots of your computer / laptop
  2. Wait till all drivers are recognized by your computer  and you will be noticed that your
    new hardware is ready to work. The content of USB stick will appear on your screen
  3. After double clicks on “CardabraLite.exe” and then on the field “Open Business Card” you can read the RFID business card. Place the RFID NFC business card on the USB stick. Wait till the LED light – on USB reader stick – is green and after that you can remove the card. The programmed content (printed info) will be shown in an Outlook business card format. Now you can decide where to store the data.

Now you have all contact information into your data base without typing or taking picture of the written paper card!!! For further details regarding this application case or SERIZ development board and RFID support, please contact Silica SO close to your location or just send an email to rfid@silica.com.