NXP Semiconductors
AN11740
PN5180 Antenna design
AN11740
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Application note
COMPANY PUBLIC
Rev. 1.1 — 19 June 2018
345311
4 of 62
For the optimization of the performance it might makes sense to restrict the functionality
to only one or two of the communication modes.
(1) ISO/IEC 14443 PICC and PCD here just indicate the similarity of the communication but do not
automatically mean interoperability.
(2) “Extended ISO/IEC14443 PCD/PICC” simply refers to the antenna design parameters and does
not include the protocol.
Fig 1.
NFC communication modes
2.1 ISO/IEC 14443 specifics
The ISO/IEC 14443 (called “ISO” in the following, details see [2]) specifies the
contactless interface as widely being used with contactless smartcards.
The ISO/IEC 14443 defines the communication between a reader (“proximity coupling
device” = PCD) and a contactless smartcard (“proximity chip card” = PICC). In four parts
it describes the physical characteristics (i.e. the size of the PICC antennas), the analog
parameters like e.g. modulation and coding schemes, the card activation sequences
(“Anticollision”) and the digital protocol. The ISO/IEC 10373-6 (see [3]) describes the test
setup as well as all the related tests for cards and the reader.
The ISO/IEC 14443 reader antenna consists of an antenna coil, which is matched to the
reader IC. This antenna coil, as shown in Fig 2,
1. generates the magnetic field to provide the power to operate a card (PICC),
2. transmits the data from the reader (PCD) to the card (PICC), and
3. receives the data from the card (PICC) to the reader (PCD).
