Integrating contactless Near Field Communication and context-aware systems: Improved Internet-of-Things and cyberphysical systems

Near Field Communication technology is an emerging concept in the field of data transfer and is rapidly catching on the market by replacing technologies such as Bluetooth, infrared and other modes of data sharing because of its ease of use and diverse scopes that are available using this technology. The NFC technology basically is a descendant of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology, which first showed up in the year 1983. A lot of research is going on in order to make this technology more secure and handy. With the development of wireless capable devices and ubiquitous availability of sensor based internet devices, more and more objects are becoming context-aware. These devices can perceive their surroundings and reason based on the gathered context information. The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to NFC technology, their use in enhancing the context aware ambient intelligent systems and to cite the current and future prospects and opportunities in the field. Also, the paper will try to explain the possible uses of this technology in day to day life of people. The paper is structured around the theme that the things have data and ubiquitous web services need to access, learn and interpret this data. NFC provides the technology to connect these two.