The Texas Instruments TRF7970A contactless short-range communication transceiver provides eight selectable power modes ranging from less than 1 µA in power-down mode to 120 mA in full-power mode.

The TRF7970A near-field communications (NFC) platform from Texas Instruments doubles battery life compared to competitive products, according to the company. Designed for infrastructure devices, this contactless short-range communication transceiver provides eight selectable power modes ranging from less than 1 µA in power-down mode to 120 mA in full-power mode (see the figure).

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Also, the transceiver comes with software that’s easy to configure to help developers get started quickly, TI says. Royalty-free stacks are compatible across a broad range of TI’s ultra-low-power MSP family microcontrollers. Developers can directly access all control registers for easy fine-tuning of various parameters for the highest performance in every application as well, the company says.

The TRF7970A supports peer-to-peer communication and card emulation in addition to reader/writer capability while maintaining pin-for-pin compatibility with TI’s TRF7960. With peer-to-peer communication, for example, NFC devices can configure Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology sessions between devices without consumer interaction, share and interact with feature-rich and content-rich data, and exchange files and contacts.

Furthermore, the TRF7970 supports two crystal oscillator frequencies, 13.56 MHz and 27.12 MHz, giving engineers more flexibility in speed and cost options for their designs. With its 128-byte FIFO buffer for NFC communications, developers can use microcontrollers with low megahertz ranges to create products that can manage large data transfers.

The transceiver complies with ISO/IEC 18092 and ISO/IEC 21481 , so developers can create globally interoperable products. Its NFC software stack libraries and RF field detector are designed to allow for easy development efforts and robust, cost-effective designs. And, it 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.

The TRF7970A NFC development kit costs $99. For details, go to www.ti.com/nfc/lp-pr.

Texas Instruments
www.ti.com