Near field communication (NFC) is the set of protocols that enables smartphones and other devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching the devices together or bringing them into proximity to a distance of typically 10 cm (3.9 in) or less.
Early business models such as advertising and industrial applications were not successful, having been overtaken by alternative technologies such as barcodes or UHF tags, but what distinguishes NFC is that devices are often cloud connected. All NFC-enabled smartphones can be provided with dedicated apps including ‘ticket’ readers as opposed to the traditional dedicated infrastructure that specifies a particular (often proprietary) standard for stock ticket, access control and payment readers. By contrast all NFC peers can connect to a third party NFC device that acts as a server for any action (or reconfiguration).
Like existing ‘proximity card’ technologies NFC employs electromagnetic induction between two loop antennae when NFC devices – for example a ‘smart phone’ and a ‘smart poster’ – to exchange information, operating within the globally available unlicensed radio frequency ISM band of 13.56 MHz on ISO/IEC 18000-3 air interface and at rates ranging from 106 kbit/s to 424 kbit/s.
Each full NFC device can work in three modes: NFC Card Emulation; NFC Reader/Writer; and NFC peer-to-peer (P2P mode):
NFC Card emulation mode enables NFC-enabled devices such as smartphones to act like smart cards, allowing users to perform transactions such as payment or ticketing.
NFC Reader/writer mode enables NFC-enabled devices to read information stored on inexpensive NFC tags embedded in labels or smart posters.
NFC peer-to-peer mode enables two NFC-enabled devices to communicate with each other to exchange information in an adhoc fashion.
NFC tags typically contain data (currently between 96 and 8,192 bytes of memory) and are read-only, but may be rewritable. Applications include secure personal data storage (e.g. debit or credit card information, loyalty program data, Personal Identification Numbers (PINs), contacts). NFC tags can be custom-encoded by their manufacturers or use the industry specifications provided by the NFC Forum, an association with more than 160 members founded in 2004 by Nokia, Philips Semiconductors (which became NXP Semiconductors in 2006) and Sony were charged with promoting the technology and setting key standards, which includes the definition of four distinct types of tags that provide different communication speeds and capabilities in terms of flexibility, memory, security, data retention and write endurance. The Forum also promotes NFC and certifies device compliance[1] and if it fits the criteria for being considered a personal area network.[citation needed]
NFC standards cover communications protocols and data exchange formats and are based on existing radio-frequency identification (RFID) standards including ISO/IEC 14443 and FeliCa.[2] The standards include ISO/IEC 18092[3] and those defined by the NFC Forum. In addition to the NFC Forum, the GSMA has also worked to define a platform for the deployment of “GSMA NFC Standards”. within mobile handsets. GSMA’s efforts include Trusted Services Manager,[4] Single Wire Protocol, testing and certification, secure element.[5]
A patent licensing program for NFC is currently under deployment by France Brevets, a patent fund created in 2011. This program was under development by Via Licensing Corporation, an independent subsidiary of Dolby Laboratories. This program was terminated in May 2012.[citation needed] A public, platform-independent NFC library is released under the free GNU Lesser General Public License by the name libnfc.[6]
Present and anticipated applications include contactless transactions, data exchange, and simplified setup of more complex communications such as Wi-Fi.[
- Post Time: 05-04-16 - By: http://www.rfidang.com