Roadmap: Wireless Power Evolution

By Michael Stark, Board Vice Chair at NFC Forum, and Jacob Babcock, Board Member at NFC Forum

The NFC Wireless Charging Standard was developed to address the ever-growing requirement to charge small IoT devices. With the current ability to provide negotiated power up to 1 Watt, this standard delivers a range of unique benefits to the market with a flexible antenna design and enables sealed product housings to avoid corrosion issues with pin connectors.

Central to the wireless charging drive, however, is sustainability and the necessity to remove contact charging waste, including countless charging cables and disposable batteries; something that the EU Common Wireless Charging efforts aim to address. While basic physics dictate that ‘a one-size-fits-all’ approach is not feasible, defining single charger standards per device type would offer industry clarity.

NFC Forum is committed to supporting the EU in this endeavor. The NFC Wireless Charging 2.0 Specification recently passed the final draft international standard (FDIS) in ISO and will soon be adopted by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) / Technical Committee 100 to become globally recognized as part of the IEC Standard 63652. Something the Forum looks forward to communicating in more detail.

But this is not the end of our work on wireless charging and power; in fact, it is the beginning. As technology advances, so must the standard. After five years within the marketplace, NFC Forum is looking to begin its next iteration and update the specification to address new market requirements to achieve higher charging power levels and device category specific requirements.

Define device type specific profiles

The NFC Wireless Charging 2.0 Specification currently supports an open ecosystem, compliant to Class 6 antennas, meaning that it covers a wide range of devices with variations in their physical layout and electrical properties for specific applications. There is a need to reduce this scope with wireless charging profiles to help manufacturers in their design.

Creating unique profiles for individual products / device classes would enable NFC Forum to detail specific wireless charging requirements per use case. An example of this is the past success with the Universal Stylus Initiative (USI), which promotes a unique technical standard for interoperable active pen styluses. The Forum’s digital pen cooperation introduced the Reference Equipment with Class 7 antennas.

This experience showed that activity could ease design requirements for the manufacturer and improve efficiency, allowing charging to be completed in a manner suitable for that specific product. The introduction of an ecosystem specific wireless charging profile is also expected to accelerate the adoption of NFC Wireless Charging solutions, as it will make it easier for product managers to implement the technology.

Devices with multiple wireless charging receivers

The NFC Forum is exploring how NFC Wireless Charging Standards might be extended to support devices with multiple charging receivers. While technical challenges exist, the aim is for this innovation to allow wireless power from a single poller to be received at the same time by more than one listener in a device’s operating volume. Compared to hardware connectors, this innovation would offer new design opportunities for product designers.

A potential use case of this innovation is Smart Glasses. When folded for storage, product designers could use this new standard to charge batteries in each temple at the same time, since they would be aligned and in close proximity in a case. For a variety of reasons, this could drastically simplify charging for these new devices.

Optimized charging up to 3 Watts from 1 Watt

Extending the charging capabilities of NFC Wireless Charging was introduced as a concept in NFC Forum’s last Technology Roadmap. The value of the work is significant, as it would reduce charging times for existing use cases and potentially support new ones.

While the premise is simple, the ambition is high. All parts of the NFC chip and overall system design must be able to support the extended charging function. Another consideration is that all the test equipment, which is currently only qualified to assess products up to 1 Watt, needs to be updated to validate that products will perform at the extended power safely.

Over the last few years, time has been taken to assess the work and resources required to achieve this considerable work item, which is predicted to take 3 to 4 years to accomplish once member resources are allocated. With NFC Release 15 launched, NFC Wireless Charging extension is expected to be one of the next technical focuses of the NFC Forum experts.

Wireless Charging is one of many topics featured in the NFC Forum’s 2026 Technology Roadmap. Keen to learn more? Read the press release.

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