Overview
ISO/IEC 16353:2011 specifies the front-end configuration command set for the Near Field Communication Wired Interface (NFC-WI) defined in ISO/IEC 28361. Commonly referred to as NFC-FEC, this standard defines the command and response formats, state machine extensions, checksum rules, frame encoding and timing required to exchange control and state information between a transceiver and an RF front-end.
This standard was prepared by Ecma International (as ECMA-390) and adopted by ISO/IEC JTC 1. Conformance requires implementation of the mandatory parts of ISO/IEC 16353 and the referenced NFC-WI specification (ISO/IEC 28361).
Key Topics
- States and sub-states: NFC-FEC extends NFC-WI with Escape, Command Ready, Command Busy and Quit sub-states to manage command submission and response handling.
- Command & response format: An 8-bit header, optional data field (arbitrary length) and an 8-bit checksum. The checksum is the bytewise XOR of the initialization vector (0xFF), the header and data.
- Command set: Includes control commands such as CMD_QUIT, CMD_NOP; RF commands CMD_RF_ON and CMD_RF_OFF; mode selection commands (Initiator passive/active and Target modes at various data rates); register/block read and write (CMD_WR, CMD_RR, CMD_WB, CMD_RB); and status query (CMD_GS).
- Responses: Defined headers for RES_ACK (ACK), RES_NACK (NACK) and RES_DATA (data). If a response other than ACK is received where ACK/NACK is expected, it is treated as NACK. The response timeout for all commands is 2 ms.
- Information transfer & framing:
- Transceiver frames use Manchester encoding and f/128 bit coding as per ISO/IEC 28361; Start-of-communication is ONE and End-of-communication is HIGH for one bit duration.
- Front-end frames use Modified Miller encoding and f/128 bit coding; Start-of-communication is ZERO and End-of-communication is ZERO followed by no gating for two bit durations.
- Parity: An odd parity bit is used so that the number of ONEs in each transmitted byte plus parity is odd.
Applications
Implementers and integrators use ISO/IEC 16353 to:
- Control RF field state (RF on/off) from a host or transceiver
- Switch communication modes and data rates between transceiver and front-end
- Perform register and block read/write operations for configuration and diagnostics
- Exchange status and diagnostic data using RES_DATA and CMD_GS
This standard is relevant for NFC chipset vendors, firmware engineers, module integrators and test labs implementing NFC-WI wired interfaces.
Related Standards
- ISO/IEC 28361:2007 - Near Field Communication Wired Interface (NFC-WI) - normative reference for encoding, bit coding and base conventions.
- ECMA-390 - Origin of the NFC-FEC specification; ISO/IEC 16353 was prepared by Ecma and adopted under a fast-track procedure.
For implementation, follow the mandatory command encodings, checksum calculation and the 2 ms response timeout. Adherence ensures reliable control and state exchange between transceiver and front-end across NFC-WI implementations.