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Near-Field Communication (NFC) - Patent Landscape Report
Dolcera, Nov 2011, Pages: 39
The NFC report provides an extensive analysis and market appraisal of the commercial opportunities open to players in the rapidly expanding Near-Field Communication market. The report presents the technology, market and patent filling trend in NFC in easily understandable table, chart and dashboard format. The report discusses industry developments and then goes on to evaluate the impact, sizing, patent filling and key players.
Near field communication (NFC) is a technology which corresponds to the radio frequency identification (RFID) communication in a closer range. Complying with the industry definitions NFC can be classified under proximity card communication, which typically deals with a communication range lesser than 10cm. Even though the technology was widespread in a non-standardized way in late nineties and early eighties, the boom which came in the field of NFC was due to role played by a non-profit organization viz. NFC-Forum, established in 2004, which standardizes the communication, electromagnetic as well as physical characteristics of NFC for interoperability and development perspectives.
The NFC Report is designed to provide information on every aspect of near field communication — the business, the technology, the applications, the players, the alternatives and the future of the market. Patent categorization is done based on following categories:
- Standards based
- Application based
- Hardware based
- Probably essential
The standard based patents are categorized according to the different elements of the standards. The standards taken into consideration are ISO/IEC 14443, ECMA-340 AND ECMA-352.
The application based patents are focused on the major application area of NFC such as mobile related applications, NFC payment, Data transfer, etc. The hardware related patents consists of constructional part of the transmitter/receiver antenna or coil involved in NFC communication. The probably essential patents were found based on the priority date of patents which are filed before the NFC forum was formed (2004).
System Description
Near field communication or NFC is short-range wireless technology, operating at a distance of 10 cm or less. NFC operates at 13.56 MHz with data rate ranging from 106 kbit/s to 848 kbit/s. Most of the RF energy is concentrated in the allowed 14 kHz bandwidth range, but the full spectral envelope may be as wide as 1.8 MHz when using ASK modulation.
NFC architecture is composed of an initiator and a target, where the initiator actively generates an RF field that can power a passive target. For such reason, NFC targets can have very simple form factors such as tags, stickers, key fobs, or cards that do not require battery, even though NFC peer-to-peer communication is also possible (i.e. both devices are powered).
NFC employs two different coding to transfer data: if an active device transfers data at 106 kbit/s, a modified Miller coding with 100% modulation is used; in all other cases Manchester coding is used with a modulation ratio of 10%.
NFC devices are able to receive and transmit data at the same time. Thus, they need to check the radio frequency field and can detect a collision if the received signal matches the transmitted signal's modulated frequency band.
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