A very high bit rate test platform for ISO 14443 and interoperability tests

This paper presents a new test platform that aims to test new generations of Near Field Communication (NFC) products implementing Very High Bit Rate (VHBR), up to 6.78Mb/s. New generations of NFC products, and especially electronic passports, will implement new data rates above 848kb/s in order to facilitate data exchange and increase security. This increase in data rates up to 6.78Mb/sby modulating a carrier of13.56MHz is a real challenge and will push the existing technology to its limits. In order to assess the quality of these new products and ensure their interoperability, it is necessary to design a new test platform. This paper presents such a test platform that assesses NFC products compliancy with new amendments of ISO 14443 Standard. The presented solution consists in an FPGA based platform driving a Digital to Analog and an Analog to Digital converters, with an antenna and its matching network allowing good quality of signals at data rates up to 6.78Mb/s.