Vision and Challenges for Realising the Internet of Things

4.3 NFC Technology and its Application
Scenarios in a Future IoT
A. Vilmos / C.M. Medaglia, A. Moroni
STOLPAN Project
SafePay / "La Sapienza" University of Rome (CATTID)
Abstract: Over the last few years, the growing availability of automatic identification technologies
such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has allowed users to interact with smart objects
(i.e. objects connected to the Internet) in the real world, realizing the so-called Internet of
Things (IoT) paradigm. An example of this scenario is the retrieval of additional product information
in a department store simply by touching a tagged object with a smart device.
Among RFID technologies, Near Field Communication (NFC) is the most customer-oriented one,
as it can be looked at as the integration of an RFID HF reader into a mobile phone. As mobile
phones are the most popular personal devices worldwide, extending them with an RFID reader
allows more and more people to interact with smart objects and the environment.
One of the main problems in creating a network of smart objects that talk to each other and with
the users, is the lack of application level standardization and interoperability: even if NFC technology
was standardized by ISO/IEC in 2004 (ISO/IEC 18092:2004), there are still significant
differences between NFC implementations (devices, operating systems, etc.) that have to be taken
into account.
The StoLPaN (Store Logistics and Payments with NFC) consortium has worked on creating a single
platform multi application environment where many kind of NFC based services can coexist
and interoperate irrespective of the handset or network specifics thus creating a homogenous user
experience for the customers and a transparent technical environment for the service providers.
Moreover, the StoLPaN team has been working on the solution to introduce personalized NFC
services into the EPC (Electronic Product Code) based smart shopping environment, by specifying
and implementing a complete shopping and payment process based on contactless technology.
The NFC technology will greatly contribute to the future development of IoT. It will provide the
necessary tool for anyone to be connected, to be able to communicate with any type of smart objects,
people and services. However there are still numerous challenges that need to be overcome
before this vision can be realized. Further standardization to ensure openness and interoperability,
business and logistical models to provide wide access to services are needed and the elaboration
of some legal issues are top short term priorities.
1 IoT and NFC
The term “Internet of Things” was coined by the researchers of the Auto-ID Lab at MIT of
Boston in 1999, to describe a network of objects connected to the Internet by means of the
RFID technology. Even if the first definition of IoT given by Auto-ID lab was related to RFID,
actually the IoT is linked not only to Radio Frequency Identification, but also to other technology
solutions: sensor networks, TCP/IP, mobile technologies, and in general to all the automatic
identification technologies which allow to identify objects, to collect and process information
about them and to link the physical world to the virtual one.
In the CERP-IoT Research Roadmap, NFC is explicitly addressed as one the potential IoT
domains:
“IoT will create the possibility of merging of different telecommunication technologies and
create new services. One example is the use of GSM, NFC (Near Field Communication), low
power Bluetooth, GPS and sensor networks together with SIM-card technology. […] NFC enables
communications among objects in a simple and secure way just by having them close to
each other. The mobile phone can therefore be used as a NFC-reader and transmit the read
CERP-IoT – Cluster of European Research Projects on the Internet of Things
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