infoTECH Feature

May 26, 2009

NFC Forum Announces Two New Candidate Specifications

Advancing the integration, implementation and standards interpretation of NFC technology, the NFC Forum has announced the release of two candidate specifications. The public can download these new NFC Digital Protocol and the NFC Logical Link Control Protocol (LLCP) candidate specifications free of cost.
 
For some time now, NFC has been trying to achieve seamless operations between numerous devices released by the forum. Achieving interoperability between the existing contactless infrastructures with the NFC devices is also a priority for the company. NFC claims that the two candidate specifications show developers how to use NFC, ISO/IEC (News - Alert) 14443 and JIS X6319-4 standards together.
 
Offering an implementation specification on top of the ISO/IEC 18092 and ISO/IEC 14443 standards, the NFC Digital Protocol specification addresses the digital protocol for NFC-enabled device communication. It offers benefits such as harmonization of the integrated technologies, and specifications of implementation options and limits the interpretation of the standards.
 
“As more NFC devices and applications come to market, it is essential that we ensure their smooth interoperability with earlier NFC implementations and existing contactless infrastructure such as ISO/IEC 14443 and FeliCa," said Koichi Tagawa, chairman of the NFC Forum (News - Alert). "These two specifications are significant because they establish clear and well-defined parameters for the implementation behavior of NFC devices and applications, thereby providing this needed assurance.”
 
The NFC Digital Protocol specification defines the common feature set that can be used consistently and without further modification for major NFC applications. This can be used in areas such as financial services and public transport. Between two NFC-enabled devices, the NFC Logical Link Control Protocol (LLCP) specification defines an OSI layer-2 protocol to support peer-to-peer communication.
 
Recently, the forum chose Oulu, Finland as the site for a fall meeting. Officials in the Finnish city call it an R&D hotspot that boasts a unique testing environment, top research institutes, a university and a separate university of applied sciences. Oulu also has on its panel a number of seasoned experts and is maintained by well-rounded support services.

Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Raju’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Jessica Kostek
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