Integration notes

When integrating the NFC libraries in your application, there are a few things to be aware of. See the following notes:

• The libraries require the NFCT driver that is a part of the nrfx repository.

  The NFCT driver uses one Timer peripheral to work correctly. By default, it uses TIMER4 on nRF52 devices and TIMER2 on nRF5340. You can override the default configuration by changing NRFX_NFCT_CONFIG_TIMER_INSTANCE_ID in the nrfx_config.h header. You cannot use this timer instance in other parts of your application.

• To use the libraries in your runtime environment, you must implement an NFC Platform software module. See NFC Platform module for more information.

  The nRF Connect SDK provides an implementation of this module (see nRF Connect SDK implementation).

• Each library must be the only user of each of the following peripherals:

  • NFCT

  • Chosen TIMER instance

NFC Platform module

The NFC Platform module allows the NFC libraries to operate in different runtime environments.

This module is responsible for activating the NFCT driver when the following conditions are fulfilled:

• NFC field is present.

• HFCLK is running.

The module must implement the following functions:

nfc_platform_setup()

This function is called by the NFC libraries at initialization. It sets up the clock interface and connects NFCT and the chosen TIMER IRQs with their respective IRQ handler functions from nrfx.

nfc_platform_nfcid1_default_bytes_get()

This function is used to fetch default bytes for NFCID1 that are stored in FICR registers. Access to FICR registers differs between secure and non-secure environments.

nfc_platform_event_handler()

This event handler is called by the NFC libraries to forward NFC events received from the NFCT driver. It is necessary to track this event flow in order to determine when HFCLK must be running and when it can be stopped. The NFCT peripheral can be activated only when HFCLK is running.

It is recommended to request HFCLK asynchronously with a notification when the clock has been started, and activate the NFCT peripheral after receiving this notification.

nRF Connect SDK implementation

In the nRF Connect SDK, an implementation of the NFC Platform module for the Zephyr environment is provided in the subsys/nfc/lib/platform.c file.

The NFC Platform module for the Zephyr environment starts the HFCLK crystal oscillator when it has received the NFC field detect event, and stops it after receiving the field lost event. HFCLK is activated only for the time when NFC field is present.