NFC Forum Begins Work On Host Controller Interface Specification

Wakefield, MA -- The NFC Forum, a non-profit industry association advancing near field communication (NFC) technology, announced that it has begun work to develop a specification for a host controller interface (HCI) between NFC contactless controllers and electronic devices' application processors. The HCI specification is planned for release in 2008.

When completed, the NFC Forum's host controller interface will be a logical interface, allowing an NFC front end to communicate directly with an application processor and multiple secure elements in various electronic devices such as cell phones, PDAs and PC peripherals, enabling faster integration of NFC functionality.

The Forum's HCI will cover all NFC operational modes, including reader/writer, peer-to-peer and card emulation. The HCI may be implemented over relevant physical interfaces, including serial peripheral interface bus (SPI), inter-integrated circuit (I2C), universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART), universal serial bus (USB) and others. The interface between the NFC controller and the universal integrated circuit card (UICC) or SIM card is being specified by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and is outside the scope of the Forum's HCI specification work.

SOURCE: The NFC Forum