Cetrix Blog

A startup or even an established company looking to get into the hardware business faces many challenges, one of the hardest is creating a prototype like prototypes of  NFC-enabled mobile devices. New Product Development Process is always challenging when a custom design device comes into the reality. However, by following manageable steps combined with relevant technology, even hardware prototyping can become an easy process.

NFC in Hardware Prototyping

Among the many latest technologies being used by hardware startups for the purpose of industrial design, Near Field Communication (or NFC) technology is a prominent one. It is utilized across a range of industries including healthcare,Fintech, leisure, advertising, entertainment, and transit, etc. Of these, NFC promises to be particularly beneficial for industrial applications due to its useful features like low power consumption, wireless connectivity, good security, and battery-less operation.

For creating a custom design device or for the purposes of hardware prototyping done using NFC technology, the developers mainly consider certain important factors such as security of data communication, power consumption, memory available for data storage, and the total cost of development effort and implementation.

Applications: NFC-enabled mobile devices

Among the many industries mentioned previously where NFC can be useful, two major ones are transit and industrial applications. When it comes to the transit industry, the trends show that an increasing number of riders rely on their mobile device to access information regarding their transit. This includes not just routes and schedules, but also various real-time data such as the arrival time of next vehicle. In the transit industry, the scope for a custom design device incorporating NFC is huge as it provides the opportunity to enable the travelers perform a variety of tasks on their NFC-enabled mobile devices such as getting travel information, ticketing, payments, etc.

Apart from its use in NFC-enabled mobile devices, NFC also has a major scope of use in the industrial segment as it can lead to higher efficiency, better accuracy and more cost savings. One of the main industrial applications of NFC is in wireless sensors. In such sensors, an NFC interface can be used for transferring data as well as for mining the energy of the reader’s RF field. One example of successful hardware prototyping of such an application is air-tight glass encapsulated sensor nodes that enable operation in harsh conditions, thanks to NFC’s wireless connectivity and battery-less operation capabilities.

Another example is Remote Sensor Networks which can be created coupling NFC with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth technologies. The NFC interface can also be used to get individual node’s data using a reader such as a mobile device. Creating a custom design device such as NFC-enabled mobile devices that are combined with RFID tags, provide extra benefits over the traditional solutions.

Conclusion:

As a global leader in designing and manufacturer of mobile computing devices and integrated mobile technologies for vertical markets, we have been providing our custom design and hardware prototyping services to a number of start-ups & mid-sized companies (http://staging1.cetrixtablets.com/our-work/), and have helped them develop innovative solutions. We transform your ideas into reality.