A Novel Automated Interoperability Test and Debug System for Near-Field Communication

In this article, we present a new system architecture of an automated interoperability test and debug system for Near-Field Communication (NFC). The increasing availability of NFC-enabled devices and the resulting amount of NFC applications require new methods for interoperability testing and debugging in order to reduce costs. We combine already existing interoperability test systems and the know-how of manual debugging methods to develop a new automated interoperability test and debug system architecture. We analyze the main components of state-of-the-art test systems, define new requirements for the new system architecture, and evaluated the feasibility with two different designs. Our new system architecture significantly reduces the time and cost of developing and certifying new NFC-enabled devices.