NFC & RFID Technologies

Near field communication (NFC) is the set of protocols that enable electronic devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching the devices together, or bringing them into proximity to a distance of typically 10cm or less.

Early business models such as advertising and industrial applications were not successful, having been overtaken by alternative technologies such as bar codes 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.