TI claims industry's lowest power for NFC transceiver

TI claims that the TRF7970A NFC transceiver provides
up to 2 times the battery life of competitive products

Texas Instruments has announced availability of the new TRF7970A NFC (near-field communications) transceiver, which they claim offers the industry’s lowest power, extending battery life "up to 2 times longer than competitive products" by virtue of eight selectable power modes. TI is also offering royalty-free software stacks for the TRF7970A to developers, which they say are compatible across a broad range of the company's MSP microcontrollers.

Other features of the TRF7970A NFC platform:

• Power modes range from 1 µA to 120 mA.
• Supports 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.
• 128 byte FIFO buffer for NFC communications allows developers using microcontrollers 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 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. 

NXP Semiconductor has collaborated with Google to develop Google Wallet, a system for mobile payments
that will launch in the U.S. with the Samsung Nexus-S smartphone on Sprint.
(source "What is NFC and why it is a hot technology", IEEE Santa Clara Valley CES)

TI is targeting the TRF070A at infrastructure devices which communicate to NFC-enabled devices such as smartphones, not for installation in the smartphone directly.  Google has recently brought attention to NFC applications in smartphones with Google Wallet, a system for transacting mobile payments that will be embedded into the Samsung Nexus-S smartphone, initially on Sprint. Google Wallet users will also be required to have a Citi MasterCard account. TI is competing in an NFC market that was co-founded by NXP Semiconductors (formerly Philips). NXP collaborated with Google to develop the Nexus-S NFC capability.

Pricing and availability
TI’s new TRF7970A NFC development kit is immediately available for order at www.ti.com/nfc-pr-es for USD $99.

Related article:

• IEEE Consumer Electronics Society to host panel on NFC technology - Tuesday, July 26