FeliCa is a contactless IC card technology that provides a total solution fully supporting the entire life cycle of IC cards including application development, card issuance, personalization, and daily operation.
Designed with optimum architecture for contactless systems, FeliCa has been shown its reliability and performance in number of large-scale successful deployments throughout the world.
FeliCa card was the world's first contactless smart card certified by ISO / IEC 15408 EAL4, which has since proven its safety and reliability within the secure FeliCa system.
Presented below are the enabling factors of this achievement.
Contactless communication between the reader/writer and the card is activated by electromagnetic waves radiated from the reader/writer.
It communicates on a standard frequency of 13.56 MHz with the speed of 212 kbps or 424kbps. The symmetric communication technology does not require sub-carrier.
FeliCa is designed with the optimum architecture for contactless systems.
FeliCa adopts the Manchester system as the bit coding scheme, which is tolerant of noise caused by the distance fluctuation between the R/W and the card.
Time slot, an anti-collision method, is simple with fewer steps per transaction.
Symmetric communication does not use sub-carrier, thus the emission is low and the communication speed has the potential to exceed 847kbps.
| Data sheet | |
|---|---|
| Carrier | 13.56 MHz |
| Sub-carrier | None |
| Modulation | ASK 10% |
| Bit coding | Manchester |
| Communication speed | 212 kbps, 424kbps |
| Anti-collision | Time slot |
Due to an efficient mutual authentication method and advantageous transmission system, the transaction process between the reader/writer and the IC card is completed within 0.1 sec, including secure encryption.
FeliCa can manage several data sets of different purposes on a single card. It facilitates unique access rights to each provider on a single card. The file system consists of "Areas" and "Services" that organize files in a tree structure. An area is equivalent to a folder and can be recursively divided out to other service providers. A service defines a way to access data entities.
Access keys serve as application firewalls that prevent unauthorized access to the services of other providers. By organizing these keys in a specific manner, authentication can be done for multiple services at once.
FeliCa supports simultaneous access of up to 8 blocks (1 block is 16 byte). If an IC card is moved outside of the power-supplied area during the session, it could result in data inconsistency. In such a case, the FeliCa card automatically discards incomplete data to restore the previous state.
Using industry standard security algorithms, FeliCa ensures higher levels of proven security. The encryption key is dynamically generated every time mutual authentication is performed, therefore it prevents fraud such as impersonation.
Besides these communication security functions, FeliCa offers other security features.
Issuance information and change-key information are encrypted and encapsulated in "packages" so that they are securely exchanged between issuers and card manufactures without revealing confidential information.
The transport key scheme provides a way to avoid fraud during shipping and the issuance process.
Three types of data are managed by the FeliCa operating system. Each data has multiple access modes, such as Read Only and Read/Write.
Additionally each data can be configured with or without security.
| Data types | Operations | Typical applications |
|---|---|---|
| Random | Read/Write any desired block | Stores any data such as ID data. |
| Cyclic | Read/Write by the block in a cyclic manner | Stores history data. |
| Purse | Read/Write any desired block | Stores value data. |
| Cash-back | ||
| Decrement | ||
| Read Only |
FeliCa provides a total solution from the development stage to the operation stage.
Various SDKs (Software Development Kits) enhance productivity for application developers.
Well-organized shipping and issuance scheme avoids fraud during the issuance stage.
A fully defined command set is provided including issuance commands and self-diagnosis command that eases maintenance of cards and reader/writers at run time.
The communication system for FeliCa contactless technology conforms to ISO/IEC 18092 (NFCIP-1), the standard jointly proposed by Sony and NXP Semiconductors. NFC technical specifications were decided by the NFC forum based on international standards set by ISO/IEC and support ISO/IEC 14443, ISO/IEC 18092.
NFC is expected to be used in various consumer electronic devices in the near future.
FeliCa technology is already embedded in a wide range of products, from cards and mobile phones to tokens, key chains and even wristwatches. In the near future, more and more FeliCa-based applications will be found in a greater variety of devices, bringing FeliCa convenience closer than ever.
