In this blog post, we will take a look at how NFC technology has changed our daily lives and become a safe and convenient means of communication.
Let’s say you’re going to the library to borrow a book. First, you choose the book you want to read. When choosing a book, you usually choose it based on the title or cover, but sometimes you may refer to the recommended books or find a book you like by chance on the bookshelf. After a long time choosing a book, you finally find a book you like. Then, you stand in front of the self-checkout machine. At this point, you will need to either scan the barcode on the book or enter the barcode number manually. But instead of such a cumbersome method, you can simply place a book on the book loan machine and it will automatically and accurately recognize what book it is. It will accurately recognize not only one book, but also several books placed at once. On the back cover of the book, there is an NFC tag in the form of a sticker. This NFC tag sent the book’s information to the loaner without direct contact. As technology advances, even simple tasks like this are becoming much more convenient. This NFC technology is not only used in libraries. In fact, NFC is already deeply embedded in modern life. It is actively used in various fields such as smartphones, payment systems, and transportation cards. Let’s take a closer look at this NFC technology.
NFC (Near Field Communication) is a short-range wireless communication method that allows two or more devices to exchange data directly by bringing them within 10cm of each other without using a communication network. Although the NFC technology itself was developed in 2002, it did not become a big issue at the time due to the difficulty of distributing related devices and tags and the lack of social infrastructure for using NFC. However, the smartphone market, which could serve as an NFC terminal, began to become active, and companies began to develop smartphones with NFC technology, starting with Nokia’s announcement in 2010 that it would launch a smartphone equipped with NFC technology. As a result, almost all smartphones are equipped with NFC technology these days. As a result, users can use the NFC function in various aspects of their daily lives using their smartphones without much difficulty.
The term NFC itself is unfamiliar, but it is already common in our daily lives. For example, using a smartphone to scan a transportation card, a payment method that allows you to pay with a smartphone without a credit card, managing inventory by attaching NFC tags to each item in a public institution or company, using an ATM without a card or bankbook with a smartphone by storing personal account information on USIM, and even replacing car keys with a smartphone. These everyday examples alone show how widely NFC is used. So, what are the advantages of NFC that make it so widely used?
The first advantage of NFC is convenience and security. NFC has a communication range of 10 cm or less. However, this limitation actually provides two benefits: convenience and security. First, in terms of convenience, the communication range is limited, so the user must bring the device closer to the reader, which naturally identifies the device that the user wants to connect to. And if the device is moved even slightly away from the reader, communication is impossible, so other devices are physically blocked from connecting wirelessly. This greatly increases security. The second advantage is two-way communication. Take a transportation card as an example. A transportation card can provide information by touching the terminal, but it cannot obtain information from the terminal. However, using the NFC function on a smartphone allows the smartphone to act as a transportation card and also as a reader to check the balance of other transportation cards. The fact that it can act as both a reader and a tag means that there is a lot of room for application. This allows users to process information in a more diverse and efficient way. However, there are disadvantages to this technology. The short communication distance mentioned above means that when using NFC, the user must always hold the device in front of them. Therefore, this technology is difficult to apply in places where users have to enter many commands in the middle. This is why NFC is currently mostly used in places where only a short moment is required, such as “authentication” and “payment.”
The principle of technology that allows for the exchange of information through simple contact is electromagnetic induction. Electromagnetic induction is a phenomenon in which a current flows in a conductor when the magnetic field around the conductor changes, and a magnetic field is generated around the conductor when a current flows in the conductor. When the surrounding magnetic field is changed to a specific frequency band by an NFC terminal, an electric current flows in the nearby NFC tag (or device acting as a tag) and the information is processed internally. When the magnetic field is changed again according to the information processed by the NFC tag, the NFC terminal detects the change in the magnetic field and accepts the processed information. As such, the NFC tag can operate without any power source because the NFC terminal flows current through the NFC tag by changing the magnetic field. This is especially useful in inventory management and book lending systems. This is because the information of numerous books can be processed quickly with just the tag attached to the book.
As such, NFC technology has only recently begun to gain popularity, and it is being applied in various places, taking advantage of its convenience and using the smartphone, which is a necessity for modern people, as its main platform. NFC is expected to develop even faster, and in the future, it may play a bigger role by combining with more complex technologies in addition to simple payments and authentication. However, NFC has not yet fully taken root in society. The lack of NFC-enabled devices and low awareness among users do not bode well for NFC’s future. In order for NFC to become more familiar to us in the future, it will not only be necessary for mobile communication companies to apply NFC technology to smartphones, but also for those who distribute apps and devices that support the technology to make efforts. At the same time, if user education is provided and more people become aware of the potential of NFC, NFC will be able to go beyond being just a technology and bring about major changes in society as a whole.
