Three Working Groups lead technical discussions to create and maintain all aspects of the NFC Forum technical specifications. Activities are open to all members except Adopter Members, with voting rights for Sponsor and Principal Members.
The NFC Forum’s Technical Committee coordinates the efforts of the three Technical Working Groups, which are the primary member-level forum for technical discussions.
The Technical Working Groups have the following range of activity:
- To summarize and compile existing work of the member companies into specifications
- To develop additional specifications in the area of NFC transport protocol
- To develop recommendations for data structures and protocols
- To create test procedures for compliance testing
The Technical Committee has three Working Groups. Working Group participation is open to all NFC Forum members except Adopter members, with voting rights reserved for designated Sponsor and Principal member representatives, and non-voting status for Associate and Non-profit member representatives.
Technical Committee Chair: Teuvo Jarvela, Huawei Technologies
Vice-Chair: Marc Lajon, NXP Semiconductors
Analog and Digital Working Group
The Analog and Digital Working Group carries the technical expertise around the Analog, Digital Protocol, Activity and Profile technical specifications of the NFC Forum, and is responsible for creating and maintaining these technical specifications. The Analog and Digital Working Group focuses on the following tasks:
- Create technical specifications which implement requirements that have been approved by the Technical Committee
- Resolve comments received on candidate or approved versions of Analog, Digital Protocol, Activity and Profile technical specifications
- Maintain internal consistency as new or updated specification text is included in each specification
- Maintain coherency between all specifications for which it is responsible
- Coordinate specification development with other working groups via the Technical Committee
Analog and Digital Working Group Chairs: Mohammed Ratni, Sony & Andreas Woerle, Infineon
Devices and Applications Working Group
The objectives of the Devices and Applications Working Group are to:
- Maintain an overall modular architecture of NFC Forum Devices
- Develop and maintain technical specifications at the data link layer and above
- Develop new technical requirements and specifications for approval by the Technical Committee
- Develop application documents to define the recommended use of NFC Forum specifications for vertical application domains
- Define NDEF encodings for widely applicable generic data formats and application specific data formats, as well as NDEF based data exchange protocols for selected applications
- Resolve comments on the technical specifications, application documents and recommendations for which it is responsible
Devices and Applications Working Group Chair: Klaus Roehrle, Sony
Security Technical Working Group
The Security Technical Working Group handles security and data protection issues within the NFC Forum, and provides security-related guidance for all other Forum technical activities. Activities of the Security Working Group include:
Defining a modular security architecture for NFC-based communications
Providing support and guidance to other working groups on security-related topics
Defining common security requirements, and describing threat models relevant to NFC-based communications
Defining, as needed, new NFC-related security specifications
In addition, the Security Technical Working Group considers other topics, such as User Interaction, Identity, Privacy, and Simplicity, to determine what, if any, additional work is necessary to address issues in these areas.
Security Technical Working Group Chair: Marc Lajon, NXP Semiconductors