NFC companies race to make the lowest power transceiver

Near field communications (NFC) technology has been attracting a significant amount of attention from technology companies, finance organizations, and retailers alike, as it allows people to use their smartphones or other mobile device for making purchases, redeeming coupons, checking in at airports, paying for parking, and other common transactions.

However, the amount of power NFC transactions require has come to be noticed, and developers have now started the race to create the NFC transceiver that requires the least amount of energy.

So far, the front runner appears to be Texas Instruments, which has just unveiled its TRF7970A, which uses up to 2 times less energy than its closest competition. Its top energy use in full-power mode is only 120 milliamperes, and when it is powered down, it uses only 1 microampere. It offers eight possible power modes, which allows the user to match the mobile device performance to that of the end device.

That said, the competition hasn’t given up. Qualcomm, ST, and Broad com are all companies that are chasing the same goal.

The TRF7970A NFC development kit is currently available and can be ordered for about $99. IT comes with software that is simple to configure for greater ease of use by developers. The transceiver was created based on the RFID products by Texas Instruments, by supporting card emulation and peer-to-peer communication, as well as pin-for-pin compatibility with TRF7960 and reader/writer capability.

The popularity of peer-to-peer communication is ever growing among applications ranging from secure pairing and payments to medical equipment.