Wifi Revolution

Renesas Electronics Corporation, a provider of microcontrollers and advanced semiconductor solutions including microcontrollers, SoC solutions and a wide range of analog and power devices, has launched RF21S, a new product in the RF20 series of microcontrollers (MCUs) which integrates a Near Field Communication (NFC) controller on a single chip. The NFC controller supports the ISO/IEC (News - Alert) 18092 international standard along with secure element functionality for use in consumer electronic products, such as smartphones, mobile phones, notebook PCs and PC peripherals.

Manufactured leveraging wafer-process-package (WPP) on-wafer packaging technology, the new RF21S MCU features an ultra-thin package profile only 0.22 mm thick and combines an NFC controller and security functions to enable the capabilities of financial transaction cards, transit system cards and ID cards on a single chip.

Enterprises can deploy the NFC technology in a number of applications such as financial transactions, transit system payment cards, ticketing and ID cards. The technology is expected to see a high adaption within the next few years, and the adoption of mobile phones incorporating NFC functionality has expanded rapidly recently.

In the conventional design configurations, developers needed two separate chips for the NFC controller and security element, which compelled them to reduce the mounting space. Apart from that, in order to cut down the transaction time for transit system ticket gates, enterprises need to deploy more processing power and eliminate the lag time while communicating with the secure element.

The RF21S MCU integrates Renesas Electronics’ RS-4 secure MCU together with an NFC controller and security functions. It offers the functions needed in financial transaction cards, transit system cards and ID cards on a single chip that helps the enterprises in developing and evaluating systems more efficiently. The company aims at offering support for MIFARE within the new component, as with its single-chip configuration the developers don’t need to communicate with an external secure element, which cuts down the time required for gate transactions in transit systems.

Additionally, the new RF21S MCU includes a number of enhanced features that help in thwarting security threats such as forgery and tampering. Renesas Electronics hopes to receive EMVCo security certification for the RF21S device in near future.

Recently this month, Renesas Electronics introduced new systems-on-chip that achieve playback of audio and video data in a single chip for portable audio-visual or ‘AV’ devices, including multimedia players, electronic book readers and network TVs. The new SoCs are EMMA Mobile EV series products that incorporate ARM (News - Alert) Cortex A9 high-performance CPU and integrate on a single chip the functions necessary for MPEG2, MPEG4 and H.264 HDTV video playback.