On this auspicious occasion of the 67th Independence Day of India, we bring you the news of a recent technical development by a team from the Microsoft Research India who have developed a secure peer-to-peer acoustic NFC alternative titled ‘Dhwani’ (English: sound). As the name suggests the system uses sound waves to transfer data. Instead of dedicated hardware Dhwani uses speaker and microphone on phones to exchange data. The results of their experiment have shown that they have been able to achieve data rates of up to 2.4 Kbps which is enough for standard NFC applications. Since it has been made to work as NFC alternative the range is limited to a few centimetres only.


The team consisting of Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, Krishna Kant Chintalapudi, Venkata N. Padmanabhan and Ramarathnam Venkatesan have laid emphasis on secure communication by implementing 'JamSecure' technology to prevent eavesdropping. ‘JamSecure’ uses self-jamming coupled with self-interference cancellation at the receiver. This means that when the data signal is transmitted across the channel a noise signal is also transmitted along with it that can only be removed by the receiver unit. Any eavesdropper trying to intercept the data shall only be able to pick up the muddled signal instead of the original one.

This technology could have a huge impact on the mobile devices sector as it will help enable extensive NFC applications. Since this is only a software implementation, users can just download an app and achieve NFC functionality on their existing phones. Apple users shall be particularly interested in this development as the Cupertino giant has never brought NFC to its devices.

For a detailed look at this research we recommend the #-Link-Snipped-# on Microsoft Research Blog as well as their #-Link-Snipped-#.

Source: #-Link-Snipped-#