NXP Semiconductors has developed the MIFARE Ultralight C - Contactless ticket IC MF0ICU2 to be used in a contactless smart ticket or smart card in combination with Proximity Coupling Devices (PCD). The communication layer (MIFARE RF Interface) complies to parts 2 and 3 of the ISO/IEC 14443 Type A standard. The MF0ICU2 is primarily designed for limited use applications such as public transportation, event ticketing and loyalty applications.

Contactless energy and data transfer

In the MIFARE system, the MF0ICU2 is connected to a coil with a few turns. The MF0ICU2 fits for the TFC.0 (Edmonson) and TFC.1 ticket formats as defined in EN 753-2.

TFC.1 ticket formats are supported by the MF0xxU20 chip featuring an on-chip resonance capacitor of 16 pF.

The smaller TFC.0 tickets are supported by the MFxxU21 chip holding an on-chip resonance capacitor of 50 pF.

When the ticket is positioned in the proximity of the coupling device (PCD) antenna, the high speed RF communication interface allows the transmission of the data with a baud rate of 106 kbit/s.

Anticollision

An intelligent anticollision function allows to operate more than one card in the field simultaneously. The anticollision algorithm selects each card individually and ensures that the execution of a transaction with a selected card is performed correctly without interference from another card in the field.

The anticollision function is based on an IC individual serial number called Unique IDentification. The UID of the MF0ICU2 is 7 bytes long and supports cascade level 2 according to ISO/IEC 14443-3.

Security

• 3DES Authentication
• Anti-cloning support by unique 7-byte serial number for each device
• 32-bit user programmable OTP area
• Field programmable read-only locking function per page for first 512-bit
• Read-only locking per block for the memory above 512 bit