NFC tags unique ID

Question

I'm developing a system including NFC tags and Android phone , using unique ID of NFC tags . But don't know what is the differences between 4 types NFC tag . I've found this :

"NFC-compatible tags can be of the following technologies/standards and each of them has a different notion of ID:

NFC Tag1 : Topaz/Jewel
NFC Tag2 : Mifare UL (ISO14443A-3)
NFC Tag3 : JIS X 6319-4 (FeliCa)
NFC Tag4 : ISO14443-4A or ISO14443-4B tag

There is also an unofficial support of the Mifare Classic cards as NFC tags. And each of them define some identification number.

• Topaz/jewel has a 4-byte ID
• Mifare UL has a 7-byte UID
• Mifare Classic has a 4 or 7-byte UID
• FeliCa has a 8-byte ID
• ISO14443-4A has a 4, 7 or 11-byte UID
• ISO14443-4B has a 4-byte PUPI

Do some tests with nfc-list, you'll see what comes out depending on the used tag. And for code, see code of nfc-list.c how IDs are retrieved and displayed."

Is that true and is thera anything else ? Can you help me ?

Pithecanthropus

Answer 1

Read more about nfc tags with these links.

• http://www.nfc.cc/technology/nfc-tag-types/

• http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/wireless/nfc/near-field-communications-tags-types.php

Type 1: Tag is based on ISO/IEC 14443A. This tag type is read and re-write capable. The memory of the tags can be write protected. Memory size can be between 96 bytes and 2 Kbytes. Communication Speed with the tag is 106 kbit/sec. Example: Innovision Topaz

Type 2: Tag is based on ISO/IEC 14443A. This tag type is read and re-write capable. The memory of the tags can be write protected. Memory size can be between 48 bytes and 2 Kbytes. Communication Speed with the tag is 106 kbit/sec. Example: NXP Mifare Ultralight, NXP Mifare Ultralight

Type 3: Tag is based on the Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) X 6319-4. This tag type is pre-configured at manufacture to be either read and re-writable, or read-only. Memory size can be up to 1 Mbyte. Communication Speed with the tag is 212 kbit/sec. Example: Sony Felica

Type 4: is fully compatible with the ISO/IEC 14443 (A \& B) standard series. This tag type is pre-configured at manufacture to be either read and re-writable, or read-only. Memory size can be up to 32 KBytes; For the communication with tags APDUs according to ISO 7816-4 can be used. Communication speed with the tag is 106 kbit/sec. Example: NXP DESfire, NXP SmartMX with JCOP.)

Further more information about UID tag size and other specification details are contain with this link.

https://www.tagnfc.com/en/info/11-nfc-tags-specs

Illustrational

Answer 2

Just some bits for your consideration:

Topaz / Juwel tags from Broadcom (previously Innovision) are getting very to hard to find. It seems Broadcom is no longer supporting them.

The Mifare Classic are not included in the NFC standard. Devices with the protocol stack from NXP (all up to Android 4.1x) do support them anyway, so they are popular, because of their large memory. But since Android 4.2 (e.g. Nexus 4 or Nexus 10) the NFC stack is from Broadcom and the Mifare classic ist not supported anymore.

Felica tags are often hard to find.

So the safe route are tags with Mifare UL or NXP Ntag chips.

Emlen

Thanks , but one more thing I want to ask is what are the differences between UID of 4 types NFC tag ? – Gargan

The UIDs are numbers which differ in length as listed above. If you want to write your SW to work with multiple chip types and base in the ID, you would need to recognize the different chips and make your code aware. – Emlen