NFC or ‘Near Field Communication’, allows simplified transactions, data exchange, and wireless connections between two devices in close proximity to each other. That is, A wireless connection is made by bringing two NFC enabled devices near to each other, usually the distance between them is no more than 20 centimeters approx. A device with embedded NFC chip can make use of this technique to send encrypted data to a short distance. This is expected to be used widely in the near future.
How NFC Works?
NFC works on the basic principle of magnetic induction, in other terms it uses electromagnetism. NFC is the extension of other contact less communication technologies that includes RFID ( Radio Frequency IDentification) tags. A NFC chip which acts as a reader emits a small electric current, which creates a magnetic field, that in turn bridges physical space between the devices. That field is received by a similar coil in the client device, where it is turned back into electrical impulses to communicate data such as identification number, status information, or any other information.
“Active NFC tags” uses their own power source to respond to the reader, while the “Passive NFC tags” uses the energy received from the reader to encode their response.
NFC works for very short range of distance, Like RFID, it works in the 13.56MHz radio frequency spectrum, using less than 15mA of power to communicate data over distances that are usually far less than 20cm. Tags typically store between 96 and 512 bytes of data and transfer data using at speeds of 106Kb/s, 212Kb/s, 424Kb/s or 848Kb/s – enough to move small pieces of information virtually instantaneously.
NFC Ecosystem
Now most of the smart phones features NFC. NFC can be used for transmitting the configuration settings like bluetooth pairing between two mobiles by just bringing the two mobiles together, Wifi configuration setting may transferred to your laptop of any other wifi enabled devices by tapping the phone on the wifi router. Here you can see that NFC is used only to transfer such small file like configuration settings, further the communication is carried out by the corresponding technology, wifi, bluetooth or any other.
NFC enables phones can act as a virtual wallet for users. You can pay your bus fare just waving your smart phone to the NFC enabled device in the bus, at PoS (Point of Sale) after shopping, instead of swiping your credit card, you just wave your smartphone by bringing it nearer to the device, as your cell phone transfer your credit card details to it. Say, for the purchase of more than 100$, the machine ask you to enter some transaction password, you directly enter it in you phone’s screen, then NFC transmit the detail to the processing machine.
NFC can also serve as a key card, smart card and ID card for the users. Passive NFC tags in the smart posters capable of transferring the details to NFC smartphones, where the detail contains information about the movie or program, ticket booking details, etc.
List of Phones that has NFC feature expands with Google’s Nexus One, Samsung Galaxy S II, Nokia C7. In near future almost all the devices is going to feature NFC in it.
The NFC Forum members list includes LG, Nokia, Huawei, HTC, Motorola, NEC, RIM, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, AT&T,Sprint, Rogers, SK, Google, Microsoft, PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Intel, TI, Qualcomm, and NXP. Among this list of Giants who where supporting NFC, NXG and Sony are the co-inventors of NFC.
Written By Sakthi Tharan (tharansakthi)
About Author: Developer and Web Designer, blogs about latest technology and tech news.
