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Field Strength Scaling in NFC

NFC-DynFS: A way to realize dynamic field strength scaling
during communication
Manuel Menghin1, Norbert Druml1, Christian Steger1, Reinhold Weiss1,
Holger Bock2, Josef Haid2
1 Institute for Technical Informatics, Graz University of Technology, Austria
2 Infineon Technologies Austria AG, Design Center Graz, Austria

Manuel Menghin

2013-02-05
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Outline

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Outline
Introduction / Motivation
Related work
Method
Experimental Results
Conclusion / Outlook

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Introduction META[:SEC:] [1/6]

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Vision of the META[:SEC:]1 project:

Unoptimized

State of the Art

Smart Card

Challenges
Cost Pressure
Security Requirements

RF Interface

IF Security
Field Strength Scaling

Reader

Power Shortage
System Complexity
Mobility

Software

META[:SEC:]

Chip

Power & Fault

Aware

RF Interface

Line-powered

Battery-powered

META[:SEC:] : Mobile Energy-efficient Trustworthy Authentication Systems with Elliptic Curve based SECurity, funded by the Austrian
Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation, and Technology under the FIT-IT contract FFG 829586. The META[:SEC:] consortium consists
of TU-Graz, Infineon Technologies Austria AG and Enso Detego GmbH.

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Introduction Target system [2/6]

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Target system: mobile NFC-System

Mobile RFID-Reader and one passive transponder

mp Target System and general problem description

Mobile RFID-Reader (e.g., Smart Phone)

Battery

CPU

Crypto Core

0..* Transponder(s) (e.g., Smart Card)

RF-Interface
(HF-RFID)

Reader-IC
(HF-RFID)

RFID communication
(data transfer and
power transfer)

CPU or
Statemachine

Crypto Core

Peripherals (e.g. ISO/IEC 7816)

Use case
Reading digital business cards (reading data >1k)
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Introduction Problem / Motivation [3/6]

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Resource constraint mobile reader

Battery powered (limited energy)
Transfers power to transponder (smart card)
Saving energy means considering the whole system

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Introduction Problem / Motivation [4/6]

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Common countermeasures
Component based power optimization (power efficient chips)
Crypto Cores in hardware

Goal: System based power optimization

Considering the whole system,
including the communication channel

Peripherals

MEM

ARM

Battery

Crypto

Manuel Menghin

Mobile
Reader
Reader
IC

Smart Card/
RFID Tag
SC Chip

Power optimizations
Fault analyses
Power aware security analyses

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Introduction Approach [5/6]

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H-Field commonly static

Required H-Field is dynamic
Distance
Current operation (e.g. reading)
Wastage of energy when H-Field is too high

Currently: Scale H-Field to save energy [MenM2012]

Problem: Does not scale H-Field during communication
Power Awareness
Static H-Field

H-Field [H]

Adapted H-Field
Required H-Field

idle

executing

idle

Time [s]
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Introduction Approach [6/6]

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Contribution of this publication

NFC-DynFS method to save energy
Dynamic field strength scaling during communication
Increase of flexibility
Include the behavior of the user
Adapt the magnetic field to the power consumption of the transponder
NFC-DynFS method to avoid an undersupply
Adapting the magnetic field strength to avoid an undersupply

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Outline
Introduction / Motivation
Related work
Method
Experimental Results
Conclusion / Outlook

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Related work

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Power optimization and management

Observer Controller [Benini2000]
System based abstraction
Control loop

[Benini2000]

Power transfer between reader and transponder

Technique: Power stepping [Xu2011]
Altering field strength to detect transponders
Technique: Distance bounding [Clulow2006]
Measuring the response time for security issues

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Outline
Introduction / Motivation
Related work
Method
Experimental Results
Conclusion / Outlook

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Method - Approach [1/3]

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Approach
Observer-Controller power-managment technique [Benini2000]
Observe
The physical relation factor
The current power consumption of the transponder
Control
The magnetic field strength
NFC-DynFS

Time

Smart
Phone

Pin

uses

Time

uses

Power
Consumption

Physical Relation
Factor

Field Strength

controls

Transponder
(Tag)

Power Transfer Channel

Reader
IC

Coil

Coil

Time

Power
Supply

Pout

Data Transmission Channel

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Method - Idea [2/3]

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Observe physical relation factor

Measure power transmission current during communication

Observe power consumption of transponder

Every operation is invoked by RFID-Reader and is observed

Control the H-Field

Use known threshold values according to operation and physical relation
factor
Thresholds for one operation

Transmission
current

Field strength gain (Rrel)= C

Field strength gain (Rrel)= B
Field strength gain (Rrel)= A

Thresholds for all operations

Operation C
Operation B
Operation A

Threshold current (ir)

Transponder
undersupplied

Acquire thresholds
for possible field
strength gains

Lookup table for control

Field strength Operation A Operation B

Threshold
Threshold
Gain (Rrel)
current (irthres) current (irthres)
x.xx
x.xx
A
x.xx
x.xx
B
x.xx
x.xx
C

Physical relation factor

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Method - Deployment [3/3]

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NFC-DynFS (deployment model)

Uses a command proxy to know the invoked operations
Senses changes of the physical relation factor on reader side
Controls the H-Field using the Reader-IC
deployment Architecture

Transponder

Reader

Hardware and Software

Functional Implementation (Reader)

Near Field
Communication

Hardware and Software

Functional Implemenation (Tag)

SendAPDU

ScaleMagneticFieldStrength

NFC-DynFS

FieldStrengthScaler

PowerPredictionUnit
+Event: Operation invoked

+Event: Change of physical

relation factor

PhysicalRelationSensingUnit

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Outline
Introduction / Motivation
Related work
Method
Experimental Results
Conclusion / Outlook

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Experimental Results [1/4]

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Measurement / Simulation Setup:

Simulation: SystemC + Android Emulator
Measurement: Android development board + attached reader

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Experimental Results [2/4]

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Case Study
Used for the simulation and measurement
Use case of reading a digital business card

/set numberOfRetries = 100

[no card detected &&
numberOfRetries == 0]

Detect Card

[card detected]
Read Business
Card (1 kB)
/wait 100 ms

[no card detected &&

numberOfRetries > 0]

Idle
/deactivate H-Field
/wait 100 ms
/numberOfRetries -uses

Three implementations:

NFC-DynFS

Simple field strength scaling

Without field strength scaling

Close Connection
/deactivate H-Field
/wait 100 ms

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Experimental Results [3/4]

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Simulation
Needed energy of the system [Norm.]
No field strength scaling
1.00
With simple field strength scaling
0,87
With NFC-DynFS
0.77

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Experimental Results [4/4]

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Measurement
Needed energy of the system [Norm.]
No field strength scaling
0.98
With simple field strength scaling
1.00
With NFC-DynFS
0.73

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Outline
Introduction / Motivation
Related work
Method
Experimental Results
Conclusion / Outlook

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Conclusion / Outlook

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Conclusion
NFC-DynFS improofs simple field strength scaling from [MenM2012]
Adaption to changing physical relation factor
26% lesser energy consumption in case study
NFC-DynFS avoids undersupply of the transponder
Adapts to the physical relation factor
Adapts to the current power consumption

Outlook
Field strength scaling for multiple transponders
Solve the issue to faster respond to physical relation factor changes
NFC-DynFS without needing threshold values of the system

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2013-02-05
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Bibliography

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[MenM2012] Menghin, M.; Druml, N.; Steger, C.; Wei, R.; Haid, J.; Holger, B. : The PTF-Determinator: A run-time method used to save energy in
NFC-Systems - in: 4th international EURASIP workshop on RFID technology. (2012), S. 92 98
[Benini2000] Luca Benini and Giovanni de Micheli. 2000. System-level power optimization: techniques and tools. ACM Trans. Des. Autom. Electron.
Syst. 5, 2 (April 2000)
[Xu2011] Xunteng Xu; Lin Gu; Jianping Wang; Guoliang Xing; Shing-Chi Cheung; , "Read More with Less: An Adaptive Approach to Energy-Efficient
RFID Systems," Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Journal on , vol.29, no.8, pp.1684-1697, September 2011
[Clulow2006] Jolyon Clulow, Gerhard P. Hancke, Markus G. Kuhn, and Tyler Moore. 2006. So near and yet so far: distance-bounding attacks in
wireless networks. In Proceedings of the Third European conference on Security and Privacy in Ad-Hoc and Sensor Networks (ESAS'06)
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Thank you for your

Attention!

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