Open NFC™ is a software stack implementing NFC functionalities on top of an NFC controller chipset.

The main features are:

• Supports a wide variety of NFC tags and protocols through high-level and low-level interfaces
• Supports different NFC modes of operation: Reader mode, Card Emulation mode, and Peer-to-peer mode
• Supports connection handover, including Bluetooth Pairing and Wi-Fi pairing
• Supports Card Emulation on Secure Elements (UICC or other secured chipset), and integrates a Security Stack to filter access to these elements
• NFC Hardware-independent stack, based on an NFC Hardware Abstraction Layer. NFC HAL modules for some NFC chipsets are provided, including an NFC Simulator software
• Portable code, with several reference portings (“Open NFC Editions“). The stack comes in three different architectures to better fit the different environments: monolithic, user-driver, or client-server
• Last but not least, Open NFC is free for use, even for commercial usage!

For direct access to downloads, click here.

Two mailing-lists are available:

Open-NFC-Announce@lists.sourceforge.net:

Subscribe to get the latest information about Open NFC directly in your mailbox (low traffic).

Open-NFC-Help@lists.sourceforge.net:

Get support from Open NFC community. You can subscribe, browse archives, or directly send a mail.

The NFC — Near Field Communication — technology allows two devices to communicate over radio waves when they are in close proximity (usually less than 5 centimeters). The scope, use cases, and security considerations are therefore different from other radio-based interfaces such as Bluetooth.

NFC devices are for example NFC cards (such as transport card, payment cards), associated NFC readers, or more complex devices such as smartphones that can act both like a card, a reader, or even a combined use (peer-to-peer) in order to exchange data.

A nice feature of the NFC technology is that a card can be electrically powered from the radio field emitted by the NFC reader, without need for an external source of power.

In addition, because of the implicit security provided by the short range, the user interaction is very simple and attractive for a wide number of use-case, e.g. virtual business card exchanged by simply touching two mobile phones.

You can learn more on NFC technology on Wikipedia for example.