Chapter 4 Articles
4.3 NFC Technology and its Application Scenarios in a Future IoT
STOLPAN Project
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data to a central server. When used in a mobile phone, the SIM-card plays an important role as storage for the NFC data and authentication credentials (like ticket numbers, credit card accounts, ID information etc)”.
Each one of the technologies mentioned in this definition is suitable for a particular context of use, within a specific scenario, but undoubtedly NFC is the most user-friendly among all of them. The RFID-based interaction of NFC is familiar also for “non-technological users”, as interaction with an object by means of NFC technology replicates the act of “touching” some-thing to produce the correspondent action in the same way that people press a button to move the elevator toward a given floor or touch a switch to light a room [1, 2].
NFC technology is not only convenient to use by anyone, which makes it a perfect carrier of the IoT concept, but it also has very versatile usage potential which may bring IoT to diverse domains of daily life.
Mobile phones equipped with NFC technology (a mobile handset coupled with an RFID HF reader and preferably also with a secure storage unit – secure chip-) can soon establish the largest RFID reader architecture of the world including hundreds of millions of mobile hand-sets.
Mobile NFC also has the capability to turn the mobile handsets into various types of smart objects. In this operating mode the handsets and the information carried by them can be read by external interrogators, reader devices using legacy or newly established architectures, just as if they were any types of contactless cards, or other type of smart objects.
Another interesting feature of NFC mobile phones, which can open interesting opportunities related to the IoT paradigm, is that they can also communicate with each other, reading, stor-ing and sharstor-ing information in proximity (NFC) or remotely via an over-the-air connection (GSM, UMTS, WiFi). The real power of the technology lies in the combination of the two – remote and proximity -communication channels.
2 NFC technology
Near Field Communication is one of the newest short-range wireless technologies.
From technical point of view, NFC operates within the unlicensed Radio Frequency band of 13.56 MHz; the typical operating distance is up to 20 cm (in special circumstances could be longer), but the actual communication distance strongly depends from the antenna diameter:
as integrated in a mobile phone, the antenna is typically very small, so the communication distance is about 3 to 5 cm.
The Near Field Communication Interface and Protocol-1 (NFCIP-1) [3] was adopted by the European association for standardizing information and communication systems as ECMA-340, published by ETSI (ETSI TS 102 190) [4] in March 2003 and then approved as an ISO/IEC standard in April 2004 (ISO/IEC 18092:2004). The NFCIP-1 specifies, in particular,
“modulation schemes, codings, transfer speeds, and frame format of the RF interface, as well as initialization schemes and conditions required for data collision control during initializa-tion. Furthermore, this International Standard defines a transport protocol including protocol activation and data exchange methods”[5].
As abovementioned, an NFC device can operate in reader, card emulation, or Peer-to-Peer mode: the Near Field Communication Interface and Protocol-2 (NFCIP-2) (ISO/IEC 21481:2005 and ECMA 352) specifies the detection and selection mechanism between these communication modes [5].
When the NFC device operates in card emulation mode, it behaves as an ISO/IEC 14443 smart card, so it is compatible with the contactless infrastructure already on the field, as well as with Mifare® and FeliCa™ smart cards.
Besides ISO/IEC, ETSI and ECMA, there are a number of standard bodies and industry or-ganizations - the NFC Forum, Global Platform, Open Mobile Alliance, etc. - that deal with NFC technology. Nevertheless, all these organizations are dealing with basic technology issues or industry related matters, while application distribution and management, application interop-erability, multi application environment and related challenges are still not adequately taken into account.
The StoLPaN (Store Logistics and Payment with NFC) consortium indentified this need and was concentrating on issues contributing to multi-application management and the estab-lishment of multi-service NFC environments.
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3 Services and use-cases
The short communication distance of NFC and its data collision control, provide a solid un-derlying security framework for the operation which makes NFC the perfect choice of technol-ogy for sensitive services and use-cases.
NFC can be used to enable a wide range of services.
Initially payment and ticketing were the darlings of the industry. These are services with many repeat users, established operating framework and acceptance architecture as well as solid revenue streams and charging models. After a first set of pilot projects however, the complex-ity of these use-cases were identified: the lengthy preparation for commercial implementation, the involvement of a number of actors with different and sometimes conflicting interests.
Payment is nowadays seen as the last step for an NFC-based implementation.
Conversely, one of the most interesting short-term scenarios is the use of NFC phones for in-teracting with smart objects as, for example, smart posters for mobile proximity marketing, mobile tourism or mobile loyalty programs, as well as with tagged products in a retail envi-ronment. By touching a product with an NFC device, the user can retrieve additional informa-tion, such as its origins and authenticity, linking a physical object with its virtual identity. An-other interesting trend in NFC based services is related to mobile social networking, using the mobile phone as an access point to the virtual world of social network. There is a number of interesting NFC based mobile social networking applications, where the mobile phone is re-spectively used as a friend connection platform (Hot in the City by the University of Oulu)[6], a location based social ticker (Friendticker by Servtag) [7] or a way to ease the collection of location information (NFCSocial by Atos Worldline) [8].
NFC can also support a lot more complex service scenarios which may transform people’s habit, may substantially improve quality of life. With the combination of smart objects and NFC-enabled mobile phones mobile health monitoring, smart travel planner and smart retail services including payment can be provided, just to mention a few examples.
In case of mobile heath monitoring small wearable sensors capture the patient’s health infor-mation which is collected through the proximity NFC interface of the mobile handset, then data is pre-processed by the device and forwarded to a clinical monitoring centre. The course of communication and interaction can be reversed too, and using the handset’s mobile and NFC communication capability the operation of the sensors can be adjusted from the remote monitoring centre.
The mobile health monitoring scenario, the combination of mobile NFC technology and smart sensor networks can be implemented in more complex scenarios in accord with the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) concept and help people to improve the quality of their lives. It can pro-vide the flexible, remote monitoring of the preferred environment of the older people, or the people in need.
Another potential application of the mobile NFC technology is the smart travel planner that can personalize the overall travel experience and can take out many of the unnecessary nui-sances from one’s trip. By using the internet, contactless technology and mobile handset the following futuristic concept becomes reality. The person books a hotel on the internet and receives the room key over the air onto his/her mobile handset. The key is stored securely in the secure storage part of the handset just like as if it were a plastic key card. The tourist also wishes to travel in the city by using public transportation. If the trip is to cities, where contact-less transport infrastructure is available, the tickets can also be sent over the air to the tourist’s mobile phone. These tickets are also stored in the secure storage part of the mobile phone.
Similarly museum and event cards can be ordered and received. Upon arrival to the hotel the tourist can proceed directly to the room, avoiding the sometimes lengthy check in procedure and simply enter the room by touching the mobile handset to the lock. Similarly when the tourist enters the metro, the mobile handset is touched to the entrance gate and the gate opens just as if normal tickets were presented.
Besides pre-arranging part of the trip the NFC enabled mobile handset can also assist in ser-vice discovery. The handset can read so called “smart posters” and receive direct information – like provisioning of e-coupons – or the smart poster will initiate the phone to launch mobile data communication with remote servers that provide the information needed. In case of a bus station this can be the schedule of the next bus, or the best connection to a selected destina-tion, whereas in case of an exhibition this interaction can result in the download of an entry ticket. To make the experience more complex, contactless payment can also be integrated into the NFC service line.
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The smart retail concept holds similar convenience benefits for the customers and also pro-vides increased efficiency for the store operators.
By using NFC enabled mobile handsets customers can read the smart tags of the merchandizes and retrieve product information from a remote server or check the product pedigree. By touching the phone to certain advertisements customers can receive smart coupons into their phones which can be redeemed at check out. (With this solution spam can be avoided and customers really only get the coupons and promotions they need.) The greatest benefit how-ever can be realized if the shopping environment is modernized as well and smart shopping carts are used. In this case the customer’s mobile handset can communicate with the shopping cart, can query information, but most importantly can perform payment without the need to line up in front of a cashier.
4 StoLPaN project results
The StoLPaN consortium has published two White Papers presenting proposals for the post issuance procedures and for multi-application management that were distributed in wide in-dustry circles (NFC Forum, ETSI, GlobalPlatform, etc.). In fact, the remote, post issuance and application management procedures have been identified as the key issues to be addressed in order to offer users a variety of NFC applications on the same device and so to build a real ecosystem. Indeed, even if the users involved in NFC trials declared to appreciate the ease-of-use and the convenience of the NFC technology, they have been able to test only one or two applications per time, without the possibility to remove or insert any new or un-used applica-tions. To have just one or two NFC services hard coded into the mobile requires a simple usage and a simple loading, but it does not have real benefits as it is just a new form factor compared to card based interaction. Moreover, it is quite expensive for the players involved, as each ser-vice provider has to build the application starting from zero. From the user’s point-of-view, to have separated applications for each service (payment, transportation, access-control) is hos-tile, as they have to interact with different menus, causing a fragmented user-experience.
In order to provide a fully functional, economic and convenient service, which exploits the real capabilities of the NFC technology (i.e. to use the same device for emulating different types of cards in a dynamic environment) a set of roles have been considered. Besides the Card Issuer, OTA (Over the Air service) provider and the application issuer, the role of multiple TSMs (Trusted Service Manager) was identified. The TSM will be in charge to provide the technology and service support in order to optimize the efforts and to give the user a homogeneous user-experience. Although the involvement of a TSM in the service distribution process has already been discussed in the industry, but to have more of them participating simultaneously in the service provisioning workflow and the need to establish interoperation between these actors is a completely new approach. This scenario can open up the NFC service environment and make it suitable for multi-application, multi-service provider operation. This concept was introduced and described in the 1st StoLPaN White Paper. [9]
To have multiple services side by side stored in the user’s handset a transparent service envi-ronment needs to be established. The project called it the StoLPaN “Host” which lets users operate multiple services according to the same principles providing a homogenous user ex-perience. The Host also simplifies the service development process as the service providers only need to develop one single version of the application and the Host ensures that they will run across diverse handset types. Actually the Host is to establish a single-platform, multi-application service environment. The design still allows adequate room for differentiation between the service providers, as branding is still possible and customers are still related ex-clusively to the individual service issuers (banks, transportation companies, etc.). This concept is discussed in the 2nd StoLPaN White Paper. [10] A proof of concept prototype of the Host application was also implemented and demonstrated.
The project described and implemented an end-to-end contactless shopping and payment scenario, using smart tags, smart shopping devices and the users’ NFC enabled mobile hand-set.
In this environment a smart shopping cart plays the central role. This cart is communicating with the customer’s handset using NFC and is also linked remotely to the store back office system using WIFI. The cart has proximity antennas to read smart tags, and a display to communicate with the customer. When customers enter the store, they can log-in into the loyalty system of the store which stores a shopping list for them that they may have prepared at home, using the store’s website. The cart’s screen also provides orientation about the loca-tion of the desired products. When products are placed into the cart the display provides in-formation about their price and promotion related to them. If more detailed inin-formation is required by the customers they can access the store’s database using the cart’s interface.
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ing the course of shopping customers may collect with their NFC handsets e-coupons from smart posters which they can redeem at payment. When the shopping is completed customers may proceed with the payment. The great novelty of the StoLPaN solution is that also payment can be performed between the customer’s handset and the smart shopping cart. Customers do not need to go to a cashier they simply select the payment function on the display of the cart. If they pay with bankcard or loyalty points the handset is touched to the cart and the necessary payment credentials are transferred securely to the store back office, where the usual payment authorisation process is performed. During the payment process the collected coupons can also be redeemed and by transferring them from the mobile handset to the cart the related benefits/discount will be deducted from the invoice. When payment is completed customers may proceed to check-out, without the need to line up and wait in front-of any cashier or counter. The smart shopping process is also integrated to the security environment of the store. When leaving the retail area customers need to pass through a security gate, which re-motely reads the products in the cart, and compares the cart content with the related payment information.
Such retail operations do not only make the shopping and payment process more user-friendly and convenient but also substantially increase the efficiency of the retail operation.
5 Conclusion and Future Work The StoLPaN project had two major focuses:
xx multi-application operation in the mobile handset
x elaboration of the smart retail purchase and payment process.
The targets are/were met. The project:
x has published, and widely circulated its underlying theory in two White Papers;
x has built a proof of concept prototype of the multi-application mobile Host;
x has elaborated the retail scenario and the concept and solutions were not only tested in the Libri bookstore as planned, but were also demonstrated to a much wider audience at the Cartes 2010.
During the work however, it was identified that there are still important issues to be solved before the above described complex NFC use-cases can be introduced an masse, can be com-mercialized.
In all present pilots the NFC environment, the available services – usually only one at a time – are static, customers do not have the opportunity to add or change services, to freely configure their NFC service portfolio. The service partners knew each other, the customers had to pre-register, the applications were loaded and stored in advance into the handsets, every technical and service detail was pre-arranged and pre-organized by the trial participants. All known solutions were/are proprietary there is no interoperation capability between the various loca-tions. All is static, monolithic and artificial.
The real, the commercial operation is different.
People do not want a single contactless service, but many, and their service needs are con-stantly changing so their service portfolio will need dynamic reconfiguration. Customers are dealing with many service providers who are often providing similar, or identical, competing or complementary services. There is not just one mobile operator involved in NFC service provisioning, but many. Various services have diverse security and legal requirements and widely different business models.
All these actors, their interests, requirements and operating specifics need to be integrated into an operating, technical and business framework to allow multiple contactless services to coexist in the users’ mobile handset, in order to provide satisfactory user experience to the customers as well as the potential of efficient service delivery for the service providers.
A full-fledged NFC service environment can only be realized based on high level interoperabil-ity, thus ensuring that a large number of independent, ad hoc parties can seamlessly commu-nicate and interact with each other based on known and generally accepted technical specifi-cations, operating rules, service guidelines and standards.
This openness and interoperability needs to be established in order turn NFC from a promis-ing technology to a fundamental component of the Internet of Thpromis-ings.
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6 Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank their partners in the IST-FP6 project StoLPaN (Store Logistic and Payment with NFC).
7 References
[1] Levialdi, S., Medaglia C.M., Moroni A., Sposato, S., “NFCTicketing: a prototyping and usability test of an NFC-based virtual ticketing application”, in Proceedings of First NFC IEEE Workshop, Hagenberg, Austria, February 2009.
[2] Biader Ceipidor, U., Medaglia C.M., Moroni A., Sposato S., “Design, Prototyping and Evaluation of SIMpliCity: an NFC system for the mobility of citizens”, in Proceedings of CHI 2009, Rome, Italy, 17-19 June 2009.
[3] ISO/IEC 18092 (ECMA-340): Information technology - Telecommunications and information ex-change between systems - Near Field Communication - Interface and Protocol (NFCIP-1). First Edi-tion, 2004-04-01.
[4] ETSI TS 102 190 V1.1.1: Near Field Communication (NFC) IP-1; Interface and Protocol (NFCIP-1) 2003-03, URL: http://www.etsi.org.
[5] ISO/IEC 21481: Information technology Telecommunications and information exchange between systems Near Field Communication Interface and Protocol -2 (NFCIP-2). January 2005.
[6] http://hic.vtt.fi/.
[7] http://www.servtag.com/en/losungen/friendticker/.
[8] Fressancourt A., Hérault C., Ptak E., "NFCSocial: Social Networking in Mobility through IMS and NFC," in Proceedings of First NFC IEEE Workshop, Hagenberg, Austria, February 2009.
[9] StoLPaN consortium, Dynamic Management of multi-application secure elements, Public White-paper, available at www.stolpan.com
[10] StoLPaN consortium, Dynamic NFC wallet, available at www.stolpan.com
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Cleopatra Bardaki, Katerina Pramatari / Elisabeth Ilie-Zudor, Zsolt Kemény ELTRUN Research Lab, Department of Management Science and Technology
Ath-ens University of Economics and Business / Computer and Automation Research Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Abstract: The paper summarizes the results of two 6FP-funded projects aiming to establish tracking and tracing services relying on RFID. In the lifespan of the SMART project (IST-2005, FP6), two RFID-enabled services, supporting dynamic-pricing of fresh products and management of promotion events, have been deployed on a service-oriented architecture that utilizes RFID technology, data stream management systems and web services. The two services have been field-tested in three retail stores in Greece, Ireland, and Cyprus. The valuable lessons learnt, concern-ing RFID readability challenges, consumer privacy, customers and store staff health concerns, in-vestment cost, and so on, are reported to provide guidance to future developers of RFID-integrated supply chain services as well as to set an agenda for academic research. The TraSer project pursued the introduction of track-and-trace services especially in the lower end of the ap-plication spectrum, i.e., small-scale users as SMEs and other smaller organizations. TraSer pro-vided a free, open-source solution platform using web services for communication and a variety of possible physical ID carriers (not limited to RFID) for unique identification. An architectural overview gives insight into design preferences and choices determining the framework architec-ture, while a report on relevant cases selected from a wider range of application pilots outlines the experience gathered with deployment on different scales.
1 Introduction
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is a key technology today that drives developments in the area of the Internet of Things. RFID is a wireless communication technology that uses radio-frequency waves to transfer identifying information between tagged objects and readers without requiring line of sight, providing a means of automatic identification (Sheng et al.
2008).
Although some of the underlying technologies for RFID have been around for more than half a century and both technically feasible and practically usable solutions have appeared already more than a decade ago, only recently have supply chain partners started to explore its poten-tial to support core business processes. This shift of attention should be primarily attributed to the decrease of acquisition costs for the technology parts (readers, tags, printers), the avail-ability of related services and functionalities, as well as the emergence of proof-of-concept application prototypes by large retailers and suppliers. Currently, RFID is emerging as an important technology for revolutionizing a wide range of applications, including supply-chain management, retail sales, anti-counterfeiting, and healthcare (Nath et al. 2006).
The advent of RFID, as an enabling Auto-ID technology, generated significant interest to the retail sector mainly because of its capability to streamline core supply chain management op-erations. As a result, over the past few years several research projects emerged discussing dif-ferent flavours of RFID-augmented applications in such supply chain management areas as inventory management (Fleisch et al. 2005) and customer relationship management in the form of ‘smart’ personal shopping assistants capable of guiding and assisting consumers throughout their shopping trip within the physical store (Kourouthanassis et al. 2003).