1. Introduction

Near field communication (NFC) has now been integrated into everyone’s digital life, such as transportation, safety, payment, mobile data exchange, and labeling. It is a short-range wireless communication technology first developed by Sony and NXP, and later TI and ST made further improvements on this basis, making NFC more widely used in consumer electronics products and cheaper in price. Now it is also applied to the programming of outdoor LED drivers.

NFC is mainly derived from Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, which uses a frequency of 13.56MHz for transmission. Within a distance of 10cm, the bidirectional transmission speed is only 424kbit/s.

NFC technology will be compatible with more devices, providing more possibilities for an infinitely growing future.

2. Working mechanism

The NFC device can operate in both active and passive states. The programmed device mainly operates in passive mode, which can save a lot of electricity. NFC devices in active mode, such as programmers or PCs, can provide all the energy needed to communicate with passive devices through radio frequency fields.

NFC complies with the standardization indicators of the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) 340, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) TS 102 190 V1.1.1, and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 18092, such as the modulation scheme, coding, transmission speed, and frame format of NFC equipment RF interfaces.

3. Comparison with other protocols

The following table summarizes the reasons why NFC has become the most popular wireless near-field protocol.

4. Use NFC programming to drive the power supply of Ute LED

Considering the simplification, cost, and reliability of the driving power supply, Ute Power has chosen NFC as the programmable technology for the driving power supply. Ute Power was not the first company to use this technology to program driver power supplies. However, Ute Power was the first to adopt NFC technology in IP67 waterproof grade power supplies, with internal settings such as timed dimming, DALI dimming, and constant lumen output (CLO).