Pairing of home and office devices and appliances via Wi-Fi has taken a step forward with updated NFC handover specifications from two trade organizations, the NFC Forum and the Wi-Fi Alliance.
The Wi-Fi Alliance, which like the NFC Forum, is a trade association controlled by technology suppliers and that also issues interoperability specifications, told NFC Times that its members see advantages of using NFC over other options to connect devices wirelessly, such as buttons. The Wi-Fi Alliance recently added the NFC Forum’s NFC Connection Handover specification to its Wi-Fi Protected Setup specification.
In addition, the NFC Forum today announced it has updated other specifications: in all, nine of its 21 technical specs.
The update of the forum’s NFC Connection Handover, version 1.3, offers a standard for device makers to allow users to connect two NFC-enabled devices–such as a printer and a laptop computer–by tapping each device with a third device, such as an NFC-enabled smartphone. The specification refers to the third device as a “handover mediator.”
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Chart: How to set up a Wi-Fi connection between a laptop and printer using an NFC-enabled smartphone as mediator. Source: NFC Forum
Among Topics Covered:
New standards support for setting up Wi-Fi connections with NFC Updates of NFC Forum specifications, including standardizing the setup up of Wi-Fi connections between two devices with NFC, using a third device, such as an NFC-enabled smartphone, as mediator. Wi-Fi Alliance's view of the advantages of using NFC for setting up Wi-Fi connections Wi-Fi Alliance’s support for NFC in its Protected Setup specification Updates to specs for NFC Forum tag types, NCI and other standardsSources Quoted:
John Hillan, technical committee chairman, NFC Forum
Kelly Davis-Felner, VP, marketing, Wi-Fi Alliance
Among companies and organizations mentioned:
NFC Forum
Wi-Fi Alliance
Broadcom
Marvell
MediaTek
Qualcomm
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