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WIMA Forum for NFC Near Field Communications
WIMA NFC conference and exhibition took place in Monaco between 22 and 24th April 2009. Our editor, Ian Poole looks at the latest developments in NFC, Near Field Communications technology.
The importance of NFC is growing rapidly. Its importance is beginning to be felt in many areas of the electronics industry as it is being taken up by some of the major players. Not only is it being used as an easier form of technology to use in payment cards and ticketing, but it is also being incorporated into many mobile phones to provide a variety of functions which are only limited by the imagination of the development engineers. NFC technology offers a niche within the variety of RF based technologies that are available today. With inherent security defined by the short ranges over which it will operate, NFC is able to offer effortless technology. There are none of the difficulties of association of stations that are commonplace with longer range technologies where many additional security issues are required.
WIMA Conference
In view of the importance of NFC, the WIMA 2009 conference and forum was held in Monaco. Located on the southern French cost of the Cote d’Azur, the location provided an excellent backdrop for the conference with its Sun, hotels and highlife. Even the Casino was not far away!
The Casino at Monte Carlo, Monaco
However, the conference itself was more down to earth. It provided an excellent showcase for the world of NFC and contactless communications. With WIMA, a member of the NFC forum, the event provided an authoritative view for the latest NFC technology developments along with the latest applications. Now well established, significant opportunities being seen for the use of NFC in many areas and as a result the technology is moving forward and significant progress was seen since last year. This year’s event proved to be very successful according to the organisers.
Grimaldi Forum, where the WIMA NFC Conference was held
Numbers showed an increase over the previous year despite the hard economic conditions. There was an increase of around 20% in the number of companies exhibiting. The number represented at WIMA represents a significant proportion of the NFC community, both members and non-members of the NFC forum. Not only were there some of the large players such as Nokia, NXP and Sony, but in addition to this, any smaller enterprises had stands alongside them, allowing large and small to be together under one roof. WIMA also saw an increase in the number of delegates attending, with more people from a wider area than in previous years.
NFC products
With many suppliers, developers and manufacturers of NFC equipment and products exhibiting at WIMA, it will be possible to see the latest technologies that have been developed. It is anticipated that it is will be possible to see the latest technology trends and as a result see what is likely to be hitting the market place in the months and years to come. Nokia chose WIMA to announce their new 6216 NFC phone. In their press release, Nokia said that this is amongst the first commercial devices using the SIM card to enable secure transactions using NFC. The phone uses the SIM card to securely hold the users credit card information, thereby allowing credit card transactions to be made using easy NFC contactless technology and the phone to hold the details. To achieve this an NFC compatible SIM card is required. Nokia also stated that they would now be providing the option for NFC in all new products. However for NFC to really take off more manufacturers need to provide NFC phones and products. Most of the major players in the mobile industry are members. Motorola, and Sony Ericsson, for example are members, but were not in evidence at the show.
NFC applications
There are many applications associated with NFC. Many of these applications will fit into existing products, to enable greater levels of functionality to be achieved. It is anticipated that new NFC applications will be showcased at WIMA. These various applications will show much of the thinking behind the way NFC will be used in the future. In some of the presentations, applications for NFC assisted social networking have been described; Another outlined an m-Wallet where payments could be made via a number of means with a single mobile phone, which if lost it would only be necessary to report its loss to a single point of contact rather than a variety of card companies, thereby rolling in the insurance aspect provided by many banks or insurance companies these days. Another application being researched at Antwerp University College looked at mapping and location based services using NFC. By using NFC tags placed at strategic places around a city, it is easy for people to discover their location, or automatically report to friends where they are so they can meet. This is more accurate than GPS because it works in buildings (which GPS does not), and could be used to indicate whether people are in a particular office, bar, etc. All that is needed is a quick swipe of the phone over an NFC tag.
NFC standards testing
One area which is of importance to many is that of NFC testing. This is the key to being able to deploy products from a variety of vendors with the guarantee that they will work “out in the field”. There are two methods by which this may be achieved:
- Conformance testing whereby the item is tested to a specification.
- Interoperability testing where the product is tested against a number of other products to ensure interoperability.
In one of her addresses, Paula Berger stated that the NFC Forum was moving toward adopting a conformance approach, although they would be running some “Plugfests” for manufacturers to ensure that their products worked with other devices on the market. Only by gaining consumer confidence will the success of NFC be assured. If it is difficult to make work or there are problems with its operation, then take-up will be impeded as the Bluetooth SIG found in the early days of Bluetooth. The NFC Forum are keen to ensure this does not happen.
Security
Security is an issue of major concern. With NFC being aimed mainly at ticketing and payments, there is plenty of scope for hackers and others with the will to break through the security that is being built in to the NFC equipments. For many, the fact that the range of NFC is limited to a few centimetres provides a significant level of inherent security. In addition to this many NFC transactions are limited to low values without the use of a PIN, and many people seem to want the freedom of ease of making low value transactions without the need for entering PINs - take the example of a swiping a card for a single train journey. However for higher value transactions would require a PIN. Nevertheless security remains a major issue. While there are many inbuilt security features built into NFC, Forum representatives indicated that the final levels of security would have to be implemented by the application developers.
WIMA Awards
As part of WIMA, there was a competition for SMEs to show their NFC developments. As these developments came from start up companies and small research outfits, the aim was that they would provide some particularly innovative NFC solutions. The awards ceremony was held on the evening of 23rd April, and true to form there were many very interesting applications for NFC. Two tracks were judged.
The first was a Commercial Track for the “Best NFC Service of 2009.There was also a second track, Research Track for the “Most Innovative NFC Research Project of 2009″. The winners were selected from 20 finalists who exhibited at WIMA. These were shortlisted from a total of 52 entries from 21 countries.
The winner of the Commercial Track was entitled: “Interactive Alerts for Childhood Pneumonia” by Interactive Research and Development of Pakistan. This solution was developed to use NFC to provide patient tracking for healthcare in 3rd world countries where patient identities are difficult to track they have no health service numbers, etc. Children, especially, were fitted with an NFC bracelet. This contained their identity number and it could then be used to feed back information on statistics of diseases, but more importantly for them, it enabled accurate tracking of blood samples etc so that the right person could be treated for the right disease.
The winner of the Research Track was VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. They developed an NFC based social media service called “Hot in the City” that used NFC enabled phones as a friend connection platform in conjunction with Facebook.
The exhibition area of the WIMA NF conference inside the Grimaldi Forum.
What to expect
It is difficult to see exactly how much progress will be made over the coming year. The current financial crisis will obviously have an impact, but the main problem is the typical “Chicken and Egg” scenario. The scheme will need to gain a critical mass to take off. While Nokia has taken the technology on board, other phone manufacturers do not have the same commitment. Nevertheless a number of large ticketing applications use NFC, including the Oyster card used for travel in London. So will it take off? That’s the billion dollar question. If I were to put money on it, then I would say “Yes”, but I don’t think it will be as big as the NFC Forum might like to think.