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Near Field Communication (NFC) is a short-range open wireless communication technology developed by Philips and Sony. NFC operates at 13.56 MHz and allows data exchange between RFID tags and mobile phones at distances of up to 10 cm.
In June 2006, the NFC Forum introduced standardised technology architecture, initial specifications and tag formats for NFC-compliant devices. These include Data Exchange Format (NDEF), and three initial Record Type Definition (RTD) specifications for smart poster, text and Internet resource reading applications. An initial set of four standardised tag formats has also been created.
An NFC device can communicate with both existing ISO/IEC 14443 smartcards and readers, as well as with other NFC devices, and is compatible with existing contactless infrastructure already in use for public transportation and payment.
NFC-enabled mobile phones hold out promise of being a low cost ubiquitous platform for data exchange in applications such as:
- Local payment and ticketing capabilities
- Brand protection: where the identity data from certain types of RFID tag is captured. When linked to a secure database of identity numbers this can enable investigators in the field and perhaps ultimately, the general public, to validate if a product or package is genuine or not
- Already more than one billion NFC-type tags have been deployed globally, albeit for non-NFC applications like mass transit and access control.
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