The Design And Implementation Of Portable NFC Protocol Stack

The Near Field Communication (NFC) technology develops from the RadioFrequency Identification (RFID) technology. It integrates various RFID protocols andexpands the transport layer and the application layer on the premise to ensure backwardcompatibility with existing RFID services. Consequently, the NFC device has betterinteroperability and supports richer applications.The NFC technology is a new complex technology, and the traditionaldevelopment method which customs the RFID applications to specific area is no longersuitable for the NFC technology. It requires the support of an NFC protocol stack. It’s ahuge project to design and develop a protocol stack, and it needs a lot of time andresources. Therefore, to design a portable NFC protocol stack, which can be easilyported to different platforms and supports different NFC chips, has great significance.Before the design of the protocol stack, we need to understanding deeply of theNFC technology relative standards and the whole frame structure of the stack. Thetraditional RFID technology defines the RF communication protocol, and it’s the baseof the NFC technology, and this thesis analyses and summarizes it. The NFCtechnology involves variety of standards and specifications, including the NFCstandards published by ECMA, the technical specifications defined by the NFC Forumand the interface standards defined by ETSI. The article sorts them, and gives a detailedanalysis of some important standards or specifications, and summarizes the complexrelationship of the mutual references, interdependence and complementary between thestandards and specifications combined with RFID technologyThe subject of this thesis is porting of the NFC protocol stack, and therefore itdoesn’t develop a complete NFC protocol stack, but based on an open-source project—the Open NFC protocol stack. The Open NFC is divided into the core protocol stack andthe hardware abstraction layer (HAL). The core protocol stack is the body of the stackand is independent of specific NFC controller (NFCC); and the HAL abstracts differentkinds of NFCC. The HAL is divided into four layers as Binding, HCI, SHDLC andPorting, and it is the main work of the porting. The Open NFC is developed on the Inside Secure NFCC products “microread”,and my purpose is porting it to the ST Company’s “ST21NFCA”. There are bigdifferences between the two NFCCs, especially the HCI protocol implementations. Butthe ST21NFCA meets the HCI standard defined by ETSI better, thus the porting is moreuseful. The porting environment is constructed on the PC using the “ST21NFCA-DB4”board and the “aadvark” of converter. After porting and testing, the board can workcorrectly in the reader communication mode and the card emulation communicationmode. However the P2P communication mode has not yet been tested successfully.