RFID and Near-Field Communications: who did what

[Enthalpy]

Hello everybody!

 

In June 2015, the European Patent Office (EPO) awarded their European Inventor Award. Franz Amtmann and Philippe Maugars winned the "industrial" category for their contribution to the near-field communication (NFC) technology, and while the EPO's wording was still careful, in the Press it naturally became "they invented the NFC"...

 

So here is my own compilation of some contributors I know of, where logically I'm not forgotten.

 

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Nikola Tesla made experiments and had big ambitions. He may have been the first (or not) as he had invented many more machines based on induction and RF. Though, the uses of electricity then, essentially for power, didn't fit the technology well. It didn't succeed commercially and little happened for decades.

 

Later with electronics, new uses appeared where low power and imperfect efficiency are acceptable, especially identification tags. I ignore who developed them, but at least these existed in 1988:

• Inductive coupling around 200kHz, feeding a card at few mm range;
• Electromagnetic waves around 500MHz and few GHz to detect a passive card or sometimes feed an active card at several meters.
• And of course, cards with batteries existed - not the topic here.

Electromagnetic waves need to radiate tens of watts to feed an active card with tens of milliwatts at several metres. Health and radiocomm regulations limit their use, among other drawbacks, but they did find early uses to pay at highways for instance.

 

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Jean Barbéris, a visionary colleague at Schlumberger, knew in 1988 what users would want to have in 2000, and was able to convince the deciders and explain the need to me.

 

I got useful and nice explanations from the radiocomm admnistration about what's allowed or not (datacomm versus ISM), how to read the laws, what's specific to one country or more general, and so on.

 

An other colleague told me what kind of processor and power was necessary for a secured transaction. Rare knowledge then.

 

Marc Schaefer (hey, that's me here!) developed in 1H1989 a technology at 13.56MHz where:

1. Inductive coupling at this better frequency and resonance feed the card at ~15cm;
2. The terminal sends data to the card by modulating the power carrier between 90% and 100% amplitude;
3. The card has a very simple circuit to regulate the power, receive the data and check that enough power will be available to the circuit (microcontroller meant for cryptography) before starting it;
4. The card sends data to the terminal over a 3.58MHz carrier.

The company didn't claim patents over that technology, whatever their reasons were.

 

I described properly my circuit (3) in my hand-written report, but in the version someone else typed, the diagram was grossly wrong, intentionally or not. In my absence, the colleagues were unable to understand it, and seemingly didn't look at the physical circuit instead. Nor did anyone ask me when I was back two years later.

 

It was a horrible time for me at Schlumberger because the colleagues, friends, neighbours were separated from me in order to keep something secret. Possibly the contactless card, or the satellite I developed in parallel, or the miltary radar components I made meanwhile. Anyway, I refused to go back to that company, and competitors made the big money.

 

The 3.58MHz carrier (4) wasn't an excellent choice. It makes for simple circuits but the ISM frequencies don't permit datacomms in theory, and the available bandwidth is limited. I ignore who developed where the card-to-terminal datacomm that modulates the card's Q-factor at 13.56MHz.

 

I ignore as well who developed the protocols (I had only RS-422 in both directions and no protection against collisions).

 

An other colleague at Schlumberger took part to a standards committee, didn't detail in his thesis who developed what, and got a physics PhD for it. The ISO 14443 includes:

1. Power feeding as I did it;
2. Terminal-to-card datacomm as I did it;
3. The small circuit no - it shouldn't belong to a standard anyway;
4. Card-to-terminal datacomms at 13.56MHz - not from me;
5. Initialization and anticollision - not from me;
6. Protocols - not from me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_14443

 

The usual name was still RFID despite identification had become a minor use and public transports, with a refined and smart card, the major one.

 

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Other people and companies developed the integration of the card's circuit in a chip. I believe AMS and Mikron did a lot for it early; meanwhile many companies mass-produce such chips. Mikron was bought by Philips which became NXP semiconductors.

 

A decade ago, several labs and companies succeeded in charging a smartphone by induction at small range at 13.56MHz with resonance, and failed at feeding usefully more power at big range by induction. The Press attributed to each of them the invention of power by induction - not to me, not to ol' Nikola, both too old for the news.

 

Meanwhile several people transmitted power by radiowaves (or planned to at satellites); one prototype in km and kW range was leaded by Guy Pignolet (hi!). Technology related to inductive power but distinct.

 

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The Near-field communication (NFC) evolved from the RFID.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-field_communication

Its name is better. It uses the same physical layer, the secure communication algorithms and protocols were already known, but the NFC committee standardized it properly. This is obviously a paramount work - but standardization is not an innovative work to my eyes.

 

What Franz Amtmann's team did at Mikron isn't clear from the award's text. There was certainly much to do before an HF circuit worked on a chip.

 

Unclear to me is also what Patrice Gamand and Philippe Maugars (and team) did at Philips. The award tells shortly "secure connection", and the patents about power from the magnetic field or the battery are as usual incomprehensible even to the specialist.

 

Hundred more people must be missing here.