White Papers
WHAT IS NFC
What is NFC? Near Field Communication (NFC) is a short-range wireless communication standard similar to BLE or Wi-Fi, but works over short range typically 10cm or less. NFC is a radio frequency (RF) signal initiated by an active NFC device such as a smartphone or reader, and another active or passive device such as an NFC tag to transfer data. All NFC tags consist of an antenna coil and a small chip that is bonded to the antenna.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NFC and RFID
Even after a decade since the term Near Field Communication (NFC) was introduced, I still have clients, advisors and prospective customers ask me if NFC can be used to track physical location or operate at multiple meter ranges. Although NFC is considered a subset of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in the hierarchy of electrical engineering applications, there are several distinctions that make them suitable to different applications. NFC is designed to realize a fundamentally different set of features than those supported by traditional UHF RFID.