Q&A with NXP European Inventor Award nominees - "We helped create NFC…but can only guess how far it will go now!"

With the European Inventor Awards just around the corner we've taken some time to sit down with nominees Franz Amtmann and Philippe Maugars of NXP who have been nominated for their work in the invention of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.

How did you feel when you were nominated, were you expecting it?

Philippe: I was very, very happy when I heard that we had been nominated. When I was a teenager, I was passionate about electronics. I was really into building audio amplifiers for electric guitars, small radio receivers, etc. Eventually I became a professor in Mathematics, but later on one of my old friends with whom I built these devices got in touch. He was working for Philips as an R&D engineer, and told me about how exciting the technical challenges were that he was working on.

Turns out it was much more suited to my character to fight against tricky technical issues than teaching theoretical topics. Now I have been working for more than 30 years at Philips and then NXP in various positions and in different locations. Although I am still passionate about mathematics looking backwards, this nomination confirms that engineering has been the right choice for my career!

Franz: It was a surprise to get a phone call telling me that I had been nominated. I actually didn't get the initial letter telling me about the nomination because it had been sent to the wrong address so the phone call was totally out of the blue. I also recently found out from a TV network that I am only the second ever Austrian to be nominate for such an award so I'm very pleased.

When you began working on NFC did you imagine it would be the global success we see today?

Franz: When we developed NFC we already saw the many possible use cases, things like Bluetooth pairing, smart posters etc. We already had in mind but it's now being used for all sorts of applications.

Philippe: Early on we even began testing with mobile phones, this was 2002 so it wasn't the smartphones of today but even then we had an idea that it could have huge benefits if installed in a mobile phone. The advent of the smartphone really accelerated this trend and we've seen NFC take off around the world.

What was the process involved in creating NFC and what were the challenges?

Franz: Working across two teams, one with me in Austria and another with Philippe in France we jointly developed NFC with Sony. From first conception to the very first chip the process probably took about one year.

Philippe: The biggest challenge we faced was the embedding of software, we faced difficulties with perfecting the algorithm but luckily we were able to overcome these issues and produce the world's first fully functional NFC chip.

NFC has come a long way but what's in store for the future of NFC?

Franz: More and more things will have NFC embedded in them as we incorporate more products into the Internet of Things (IoT). It's hard to say what will be the next killer app but in general we will definitely see a rise in intelligent goods.

Philippe: I'm more of a tech guy so I leave the imagination to the developers. We helped create NFC "gave birth to the baby" as it were but we can only guess how far it will go now! The sky is the limit. I'm confident that creative people will continue to have lots of ideas for NFC and it will continue to develop as an important platform in the Internet of Things

Franz and Philippe will attend the awards ceremony on the 11 June 2015 at the Palais Brongniart (La Bourse) in Paris, France.here.

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