Differences between NFC and RFID technology

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Near Field Communication (NFC) are two hot keywords, both of which are Tagging technology. NFC is developed on the basis of RFID, NFC is not much different from RFID in essence, and it is based on the signal transmission between two objects with similar geographical locations.

RFID is a non-contact identification technology, divided into active and passive two. The main working principle is that the RFID reader emits a radio frequency, passes through the coil of the electronic tag, generates a signal, and the reader reads the information and decodes it, completing the entire identification process. Usually, active tags (active tags) can also actively send signals. RFID systems are mainly composed of readers and transponders.

NFC is a technology widely used in mobile phones in recent years, mainly when two NFC devices are near each other in a fairly close distance, they can exchange information with each other and complete corresponding transactions and other functions. The biggest feature of NFC is the integration of the reader and the transponder into the same chip. NFC technology adds point-to-point communication function, which can quickly establish P2P (point-to-point) wireless communication between Bluetooth devices, and NFC devices find each other and establish communication connections. The two devices of P2P communication are peer to peer, while the two devices of RFID communication are master-slave.

The relationship between the two is that NFC can be considered to be a subset of RFID, that is, RFID with a communication distance of 10cm or 4 inches is NFC. NFC is only limited to the 13.56MHz band! The frequency band of RFID has low frequency (125KHz to 135KHz), high frequency (13.56MHz) and ultra-high frequency (860MHz to 960MHz). This difference is mainly due to the fact that in some applications designed for cash payments and credit cards, other devices can also receive personal RFID information when the communication distance is low, and there are insecure factors. The effective distance of NFC is about 10cm, so it has high safety. If some special signal acquisition equipment is used, the information of RFID can be read at a considerable distance.