NXP Semiconductors recently introduced the second generation of its NFC tag (News - Alert) IC suite of products. The NTAG21x family has been developed to further build on the deployment of NFC tags for OEMs, inlaying customers and end-users. In addition to boosting RF performance, the NTAG21x family includes a variety of memory sizes, an UID ASCII mirror, a NFC counter, an integrated originality signature as well as password protection among other features.

In a statement, Ivan Plajh, head of Business Line Mobile and Smart Media at SMARTRAC (News - Alert), said, "The NTAG product family is an important base for SMARTRAC's NFC tag offering. The innovative features of the new NTAG21x, such as UID mirroring, specific NFC counter, and basic security with password based authentication, will generate additional momentum in major non-payment NFC applications.”

Some of the new capabilities of the NTAG21x family include a 32-bit password authentication included to provide users with a simple protection mechanism for data which is stored into the tag; an UID ASCII mirror which can automatically map the IC unique serial number to a stored NDEF message for ensuring simplified tag serialization; a 24-bit NFC counter and NFC counter ASCII mirror for measuring the number of interactions that take place between NFC devices and the tag, which is then appended to a stored NDEF message.

Ideal for publishing, retail, advertising, consumer electronics, gaming and smartphone applications, the NTAG21x essentially includes four different products that have been designed for specific application categories. NTAG210, NTAG213, NTAG215, and NTAG216 come with 48, 144, 504, and 888 bytes of user memory in keeping with the maximum message size that can be stored.