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Bluetooth + NFC = Future?

Monday, August 13, 2007

by Adi Tedjasaputra

The most popular technology used to pair mobile phones and headsets is undoubtedly Bluetooth. However, it is also a common knowledge that pairing mobile phones and headsets using Bluetooth can be cumbersome. When Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), a trade association behind Bluetooth, approved Bluetooth version 2.1 + EDR specification a couple of weeks ago, it is of no surprise that the specification includes an improvement for inter-device pairing process and a support for Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Among a myriad of wireless technologies, why does the new Bluetooth specification support NFC technology?

The Bluetooth SIG claims on its website that NFC will "take ease of use to the next level". While this assertion may sound like a marketing jargon, NFC does have a potential to exploit two well-known physical interaction styles, i.e. waving and touching/tapping, in various short-range contactless applications. The familiarity with waving and touching is expected to ease the use of NFC-enabled devices and thus improve the overall user experience of NFC-enabled devices.

User Experience.

Beside the improvement in user experience, NFC also has a potential to bridge the change of paradigm in logical bond or connection among physical objects. When the on-going work on NFC's Host Controller Interface (HCI) specification is completed by 2008, the HCI is expected to cover all NFC operational modes, including reader/writer, peer-to-peer and card emulation.

Imagine your NFC-enabled mobile phones that can act both as a credit card and a personal payment terminal. Imagine showing your digital photos and videos from your NFC-enabled camera on your friend's NFC-enabled television only by putting your camera next to the television. Imagine many other logical connection among physical objects that may be possible with NFC technology.

While the logical connection among physical objects is quite attractive, the technology may face some interoperability problems if there is no single technology standardization widely accepted by technology providers and end-users alike. The recent announcement of the NFC tag specification has shown that the NFC Forum has learnt from the RFID industry experience and built its NFC tag specification on the existing standards, such as: International Organization for Standardization (ISO) / International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 14443 and Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) X 6319-4/FeliCa.

User Experience.

The fact that NFC technology can ride on the popularity of mature technology such as Bluetooth shows the confidence in the future of NFC technology. However, similar with any other new and emerging technology, NFC will find its challenges along the way. Some of the challenges already identified include unreliable NFC infrastructure and insecure applications. We will see in the next 5 years whether NFC technology can overcome the challenges and find its niche application as Bluetooth did with its pairing feature.

The writer is the Founder of RFID Asia - The Prominent RFID Community in Asia.

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Labels: bluetooth, card, mobile, nfc, payment, reader, rfid, tag, technology