NFC technology — Operating principles and applications

Contactless technologies have been widely deployed around the world for decades, and are used in a variety of sectors, including transport, logistics, access control and payment. Form factors are numerous: contactless smart cards, badges, adhesive labels...

Over the past few years, with the emergence of contactless technology known as NFC (Near Field Communication – Communication en champ proche), new ways of communicating and interacting with our environment have been developed, leading to the emergence of new applications and optimizations that NFC can bring to many areas of activity. Numerous consumer products incorporate NFC technology, starting with smartphones, which have become essential items in the lives of millions of people. NFC-enabled devices can be used to read contactless tags and cards, exchange content between two devices, and even carry payment or transport cards in the phone to pay for or validate transport with a simple gesture.

NFC technology not only offers additional form factors, but also provides interoperability between different contactless technologies. In fact, it is based on a set of standards directly inspired by its operating principle: electromagnetic fields. It is also compatible with other technologies, although these are not the originators of NFC technology. This brings complexity to the definition and delimitation of the scope of NFC technology. In fact, as we shall see, some near-field communication technologies do not fall within the NFC spectrum, despite their name.