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Issue #211 February 2008
RFID Payment Terminal
by Carlos Cossio
Start | System Overview | Energy Transmission | 100% Amplitude Modulation | Load Modulation | MIFARE Card | MIFARE and ISO 14443 | Pay as You Go | Hardware Design | Antenna Design Rules | Antenna Size | Directly Matched Antenna | Firmware Design | Catch the Wave! | Sources & PDF
MIFARE AND ISO 14443
MIFARE is reputedly the most widely installed contactless smart card technology in the world with approximately 500 million smart card chips and 5 million reader modules in use to date. The technology is patented by NXP Semiconductors and licensed to many semiconductor manufacturers, such as Infineon Technologies, Hitachi, and Atmel. MIFARE proprietary technology is based on the ISO 14443 (RFID) Type A 13.56-MHz contactless smart card standard. The technology is embodied in both cards and readers (also referred to as a proximity coupling device).
The MIFARE name covers two different kinds of contactless cards. On one hand, MIFARE standard or classic cards employ a high-level proprietary protocol instead of ISO 14443-4 with an NXP Semiconductors proprietary security protocol for authentication and ciphering. On the other hand, MIFARE ProX and SmartMX are NXP brand names for smart cards that comply with ISO 14443-4 (T = CL).
MIFARE technology has been under the ISO rules for licensing since the development of the ISO 14443 standard, so there are no licensing issues for commercial applications or any additional fees that are not covered in the purchase price of the cards and reader chips.
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