What is NFC?

I’m reading about few new technologies these days and how can I utilize these technologies in my mobile application development and innovate something new J. Near Field Communication is one of the technology which is more prominent on newer Android based phones. In London Olympics (Starting today), many hotels (Holiday Inn) are providing NFC based door keys, exciting? So what is NFC? And how is it different from other short range wireless technologies like Bluetooth and RFID?

NFC (Near Field communication) allows for simplified transactions, data exchange, and wireless connections between two devices in proximity to each other, usually not more than few centimeters (less than 4 cms and upto 20 Cms). NFC involves an initiator and a recipient (target). The initiator actively generates an RF signal that can power a passive target. This enables NFC targets to take very simple form factors such as tags, stickers, key fobs, or cards that do not require batteries.

NFC can be used in three specific ways

• Card enumeration: The device is a contactless card. Mobile will act as credit card, debit card, badge or tickets.
• Reader Mode: The device can read RFID tags. This is most similar to how barcode scanning works. E.g. Today we can scan a barcode using Mobile camera and application, eventually NFC can replace barcode reading
• P2P mode: Two devices can communicate back and forth and exchange data. In this mode of usage, two NFC enabled devices can exchange information such as contact info, files, pictures, songs etc.

Many currently available smartphones (Android, Windows and Symbian) contains NFC chips that can send encrypted data a short distance to a reader located, for instance, next to retail cash register. Shoppers who have their credit card information stored in their NFC enabled smartphones can pay for purchases by waving their smartphones near or tapping them on the reader. Non NFC based mobiles can also be enabled with NFC technologies using NFC SIMs and NFC microSD cards.

NFC Use cases

• -          Contactless credit card payments
• -          NFC Based information access point. (To access Product information at retail stores)
• -          Electronic Business card.
• -          Electronic Keys based on NFC.
• -          NFC Based Electronic Ticketing for Buses, Trains, and Movies etc.
• -          File Sharing: Tap one NFC device to another to instantly share a contact, photo, song, applications, videos and web link.
• -          ID Card, keycard,  Rental car/hotel keys

Now on the other hand RFID is similar technology and we can safely say, NFC is subset of RFID. RFID uses radio frequency waves that are either passive, active, or a combination of both. Active RFID tags have a power source that helps extend their range even further while passive devices rely on the energy that it receives from the interrogating device to send its own information. While NFC tagged objects are usually passive.

Bluetooth also is based on RF technology but biggest difference between Bluetooth and NFC is it’s range. Bluetooth supports up to 100 mtr range to connect another Bluetooth enabled devices while NFC is very small range. Another big difference between these two technologies is its speed. Bluetooth can transfer files over 2MBps but NFC is not exactly  designed to do file transfers.

	NFC	Bluetooth	RFID
Range	Up to 4 inch	100 mtrs	50 mts
Speed to transfer	Slowest	Fast	Slow
Pairing	No Required	Required	Required (Human Interaction)
Frequency	13.56MHz	2.4-2.5GHz	13.56MHz
Security (Encrypted Data transfer)	Yes	Yes	No

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