NFC: Near Field Communication

What is NFC?

      Near Field Communication (NFC) technology makes life easier and more convenient for consumers around the world by making it simpler to make transactions, exchange digital content, and connect electronic devices with a touch.

  

     A standards-based connectivity technology, NFC harmonizes today's diverse contactless technologies, enabling current and future solutions in areas such as:

• Access control
• Consumer electronics
• Healthcare
• Information collection and exchange
• Loyalty and coupons
• Payments
• Transport

Key Benefits of NFC

NFC provides a range of benefits to consumers and businesses, such as:

• Intuitive: NFC interactions require no more than a simple touch
• Versatile: NFC is ideally suited to the broadest range of industries, environments, and uses
• Open and standards-based: The underlying layers of NFC technology follow universally implemented ISO, ECMA, and ETSI standards
• Technology-enabling: NFC facilitates fast and simple setup of wireless technologies, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.)
• Inherently secure: NFC transmissions are short range (from a touch to a few centimeters)
• Interoperable: NFC works with existing contactless card technologies
• Security-ready: NFC has built-in capabilities to support secure applications

NFC as a Business Driver

         NFC was developed to address the contactless standards dilemma. NFC is a technology standard that harmonizes and extends existing contactless standards. NFC technology is supported by the world's leading consumer electronics (CE) and mobile device manufacturers, semiconductor producers, network operators, developers, service companies, and financial institutions.
            NFC enables these organizations to invest in one technology that supports leading global contactless technologies and applications. By integrating NFC, devices can support and interoperate with existing contactless card applications and infrastructures such as access control, payment, and transport.
It also introduces innovative new features that are only possible with the union of contactless technology and CE devices.

NFC and Contactless Technologies

        NFC complements many popular consumer level wireless technologies, by utilizing the key elements in existing standards for contactless card technology (ISO/IEC 14443 A&B and JIS-X 6319-4). NFC can be compatible with existing contactless card infrastructure and enables a consumer to utilize one device across different systems.
          Extending the ability of the contactless card technology, NFC also enables devices to share information at a distance less than 4 centimeters with a maximum communication speed of 424kbps. Users can share business cards, make transactions, access information from smart posters or provide credentials for access control systems with a simple touch.
         NFC’s bidirectional communication ability is ideal for establishing connections with other technologies by the simplicity of touch. For example if the user wants to connect their mobile device to their stereo to play media, they can simply touch the device to the stereo’s NFC touch point and the devices will negotiate the best wireless technology to use.
What does this mean for the end user? Easy connections, quick transactions, and simple data sharing.

NFC as Technology Enabler

      NFC creates a new and universal interface to existing devices through simple touch interaction. NFC bridges gaps between existing technologies and devices to enable new applications/services (enabling connections from real to virtual, connections to physical/real world).

NFC Means Proximity

   All NFC transactions take place within a very small area, anywhere from a touch to 4 centimeters. This means that you can't unknowingly purchase something because you walk next to a smart poster.

NFC Enables One-Touch Setup of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

       NFC is able to replace the pairing of Bluetooth-enabled devices, or the configuration of a Wi-Fi network through PINs and keys, by simply touching the two devices to be paired or connected to the network, or by touching the device to a tag. The gain in simplicity of use is substantial while the level of confidence is exactly similar.

NFC Enables Electronic Door Locks

   For doorlocks that are equipped with an actuator and a short range contactless reader, a simple upgrade may allow NFC devices to substitute for contactless cards. Advantages, for example in hospitality, are the possibility to remotely send the access rights in advance to the user's handset, and the coupling with other applications such as booking, and skipping the check-in phase. In the example of access control, one can centrally manage the rights in real time without physical delivery of cards.

NFC and Healthcare

      Personal health monitors recording a human’s vital data can be read by an NFC reader/writer, which for example might be a persons mobile phone, by simply touching the reader to the health device. The physical proximity that NFC requires guarantees the operator has the right understanding of which data is read at what time, thus greatly reducing the chance of a human error and, by the simplicity of instructions, allows patients of every age to monitor their health status autonomously.

          And once a standardized format and secure storage for medical records and history is available, as well as generally accepted procedures to access these data, NFC will be a natural way to interact between a portable device held by the user and a medical system.

NFC Devices Enable Data Exchange

     NFC enables users to quickly and easily transfer information between devices with a simple touch. Whether it be an exchange of business cards, a quick transaction, or downloading a coupon, the proximity ensures that the information shared is the information you want to share.

NFC and Interoperability

      NFC represents a converging evolution of existing contactless standards toward the goal of global interoperability. The NFC Forum takes both a structural and a pragmatic approach to give maximum assurance that this goal can be met.

        Structurally, NFC Forum specifications are based on existing and recognized standards like ISO/IEC 18092 and ISO/IEC 14443-2,3,4, as well as JIS X6319-4. They are implementation specifications that describe the parts of those standards that are relevant for NFC Forum devices. Therefore, compliant devices behave in the most consistent way, and the evolution of existing infrastructure toward full NFC is facilitated.

     The Certification Program, which checks devices for compliance with NFC Forum specifications, is being launched in waves as NFC Forum specifications evolve. Currently, certification includes testing for the lower-level digital protocols, specifically the Tag Operation specifications for the different tag types, the NFC Digital Protocol Specification, and the NFC Activity Specification. Moving forward, certification will also include testing for the physical layer ("NFC RF Analogue Technical Specification") and selected upper-level digital protocols ("NFC Logical Link Control Protocol (LLCP) Technical Specification" and "NFC Simple NDEF Exchange Protoco (SNPE) Technical Specification").

       Pragmatically, the NFC Forum offers its members the opportunity to participate in PlugFest events, held throughout the year, where NFC solution providers can anonymously test the interoperability of their products with other NFC products through hands-on experiments. This process can be applied to certified devices as well as equipment and software that has not been certified.

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