TI intros industry’s lowest power near field communication transceiver

BANGALORE, INDIA: Raising the standard for ultra-low-power near field communication (NFC) devices, Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) has announced the industry’s lowest-power contactless short-range communication transceiver. Ideal for infrastructure devices, the new TRF7970A extends battery life up to 2 times longer than competitive products, as it provides eight selectable power modes ranging from <1 µA in power-down mode to 120 mA in full-power mode.

The transceiver comes with easy-to-configure software to help developers get started quickly. Royalty-free stacks are compatible across a broad range of ultra-low-power MSP microcontrollers. Additionally, developers are able to directly access all control registers, allowing for easy fine-tuning of various parameters for the highest performance in every application.

The new TRF7970A builds on TI’s solid platform of RFID products by supporting peer-to-peer communication and card emulation in addition to reader/writer capability while maintaining pin-for-pin compatibility with the TRF7960. Peer-to-peer communication continues to increase in popularity in applications including medical equipment, secure pairing and payments.

This allows users to more easily take advantage of continuously evolving features and apps. For example, NFC devices can configure Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology sessions between devices without consumer interaction, share and interact with feature- and content- rich data such as coupons at point of sale, and allow consumer devices to easily exchange files and contacts.

Features and benefits of the TRF7970A NFC platform:
• Industry’s lowest powered NFC device supporting up to 2 times longer battery life with eight selectable power modes (power modes range from <1 µA to 120 mA).
• Supports a wide range of communication options with peer-to-peer communication, reader/writer capability and card emulation.
• Supports two crystal oscillator frequencies: 13.56MHz or 27.12MHz frequencies give engineers more flexibility in speed and cost options for their designs.
• Large 128 byte FIFO buffer for NFC communications allows developers using MCUs with low MHz to create products capable of handling large data transfers.
• Compliance with ISO/IEC 18092 and ISO/IEC 21481 standards gives developers the ability to create globally interoperable products.
• NFC software stack libraries and an innovative RF field detector allow for easy development efforts and robust, cost effective designs.
• NFC Peer-to-Peer Initiator as well as Active and Passive Target Operation are available for MSP430 microcontrollers.
• Supports multiple reader/writer protocols and includes demo software stacks for reader/writer mode ISO/IEC 15693, ISO/IEC 18000-3, ISO/IEC 14443A/B and FeliCa.