Panthronics, a fabless semiconductor company specializing in high performance wireless technology, has developed an IoT NFC Reader application to run on the Synergy TB-S3A1, a development board for the Synergy S3A1 series of microcontrollers which are based on a 48MHz Arm Cortex-M4 core.
NFC physical and protocol layer operations are performed on a Panthronics PTX100R Evalboard, which connects to the TB-S3A1 board via its Pmod header. The application provides full NFC reader functionality conforming to the standard ISO 14443A/B/F/V specifications.
The Evalboard and IoT NFC Reader application have been fully integrated into the Synergy Software Package from Renesas and its e2 studio integrated development environment.
Commenting Mohammed Dogar, Senior Director of Global Business Development at Renesas, said: ‘Simple contactless communication is one of the key supporting technologies for the IoT. An application-ready NFC solution is a valuable part of the development ecosystem for platforms such as Synergy microcontrollers. The PTX100R NFC hardware and application work well and intuitively, in any number of application conditions. That means any Synergy MCU user, whether or not they are NFC experts, can introduce NFC functionality into their system design quickly and easily.’
The demo kit’s PTX100R Evalboard provides a complete hardware environment for evaluating the operation of the PTX100R Reader IC. Benefiting from an architecture that's been designed from the ground up for NFC systems, Panthronics' NFC readers offer higher sensitivity, more accurate wave-shaping, higher output power and a simpler hardware implementation than is the case with conventional NFC reader ICs.
The PTX100R Evalboard supports full NFC functionality and includes a 50mm x 50mm antenna board which may be detached along with its matching circuit to allow users to evaluate the PTX100R’s performance with their own antenna.
Developers using the PTX100R Evalboard can also take advantage of dedicated applications engineering support provided directly by Panthronics via the PTX Support Portal online. The portal provides password-protected access to a knowledge base of product data, articles and guidance for each of four types of application: point-of-sale terminals, wireless charging, IoT devices, and mobile devices. It also provides APIs, a configuration tool and a GUI with installer.
