Near Field Communication

Near Field Communication or NFC, is a short-range wireless technology which enables the communication between devices over a short distance (hands width). The technology is primarily aimed at usage in mobile phones.

NFC is compatible with the existing contactless infrastructure already in use for public transportation and payment.

Essential specifications
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-Works by magnetic field induction. It operates within the globally available and unlicensed RF band of 13.56 MHz.
-Working distance: 0-20 centimeters
-Speed: 106 kbit/s, 212 kbit/s or 424 kbit/s
-There are two modes:
-Passive Communication Mode: The Initiator device provides a carrier field andthe target device answers by modulating existing field. In this mode, the Target device may draw its operating power from the Initiator-provided electromagnetic field, thus making the Target device a transponder.
-Active Communication Mode: Both Initiator and Target device communicate by generating their own field. In this mode, both devices typically need to have a power supply.
-NFC can be used to configure and initiate other wireless network connections such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or Ultra-wideband.
A patent licensing program for NFC is currently under development by Via Licensing Corporation, an independent subsidiary of Dolby Laboratories.


Uses and applications
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NFC technology is currently mainly aimed at being used with mobile phones. There are three main use cases for NFC:

-card emulation: the NFC device behaves like an existing contactless card)
-reader mode: the NFC device is active and read a passive RFID tag, for example for interactive advertising)
-P2P mode: two NFC devices are communicating together and exchanging information.)
Plenty of applications will be possible such as:

-Mobile ticketing in public transport - an extension of the existing contactless infrastructure.
-Mobile Payment - the mobile phone acts as a debit/ credit payment card.
-Smart poster - the mobile phone is used to read RFID tags on outdoor billboards in -order to get info on the move.
-Bluetooth pairing - in the future pairing of Bluetooth 2.1 devices with NFC support will be as easy as bringing them close together and accepting the pairing. The process of activating Bluetooth on both sides, searching, waiting, pairing and authorization will be replaced by a simple "touch" of the mobile phones.
Other applications in the future could include:

-Electronic tickets – airline tickets, concert/event tickets, and others
-Electronic money
-Travel cards
-Identity documents
-Mobile commerce
-Electronic keys – car keys, house/office keys, hotel room keys, etc

Standardization bodies & industry projects
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Standards
It was approved as an ISO/IEC standard on December 8, 2003 and as an ECMA standard later on.

NFC is an open platform technology standardized in ECMA-340 and ISO/IEC 18092. These standards specify the modulation schemes, coding, transfer speeds and frame format of the RF interface of NFC devices, as well as initialization schemes and conditions required for data collision-control during initialization-for both passive and active NFC modes. Furthermore, they also define the transport protocol, including protocol activation and data-exchange methods. Air interface for NFC is standardized in:

-ISO/IEC 18092/ECMA-340 : Near Field Communication Interface and Protocol-1(NFCIP-1)
-ISO/IEC 21481/ECMA-352 : Near Field Communication Interface and Protocol-2 (NFCIP-2)
NFC Forum has in addition defined a common data format called NDEF, which can be used to store and transport different kinds of items, ranging from any MIME-typed object to ultra-short RTD -documents, such as URLs.

NDEF is conceptually very similar to MIME. It is a dense binary format of so-called "records", in which each record can hold a different type of object. By convention, the type of the first record defines the context of the entire message.

NFC Forum
The NFC Forum is a non-profit industry association founded on March 18, 2004 by NXP Semiconductors, Sony Corporation and Nokia Corporation to advance the use of NFC short-range wireless interaction in consumer electronics, mobile devices and PCs. The NFC Forum will promote implementation and standardization of NFC technology to ensure interoperability between devices and services. In July 2007, there were over 115 members of the NFC Forum.

GSMA
The GSM Association (GSMA) is the global trade association representing 700 mobile phone operators across 218 countries of the world.

They have launched two initiatives:

-the Mobile NFC initiative: fourteen mobile network operators, who together represent 40% of the global mobile market back NFC and are working together to develop NFC applications. They are Bouygues Télécom, China Mobile, Cingular Wireless, KPN, Mobilkom Austria, Orange, SFR, SK Telecom, Telefonica Móviles España, Telenor, TeliaSonera, Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM), Vodafone and 3 .
On 13th February 2007, they published a white paper on NFC to give the point of view of mobile operators on the NFC ecosystem .

-the Pay buy mobile initiative seeks to define a common global approach to using Near Field Communications (NFC) technology to link mobile devices with payment and contactless systems. To date, 30 mobile operators have joined this initiative.

StoLPaN
StoLPaN (‘Store Logistics and Payment with NFC’) is a pan-European consortium supported by the European Commission’s Information Society Technologies program. StoLPaN will examine the as yet untapped potential for bringing together the new kind of local wireless interface, NFC and mobile communication.

Other standardization bodies
Other standardization bodies are involved in NFC:

-ETSI / SCP (Smart Card Platform) to specify the interface between the SIM card and the NFC chipset.
-Global Platform to specify a multi-application architecture of the secure element.
-|EMVCo for the impacts on the EMV payment applications.

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