A TOUCH IS WORTH A THOUSAND CLICKS

Zoe Antoniou

Nokia Research Centre Cambridge, 3 Cambridge Centre, Cambridge, MA, 02142, USA

Keywords: Intuitive user interaction, middleware, pervasive computing, RFID, NFC, UPnP.

Abstract: The fusion of interaction and discovery technologies can facilitate easy, intuitive and impromptu access to

networked entities by users without the need for significant administrative overhead. Due to mobility,

complex connectivity and small user interfaces, traditional service discovery methods fail to meet the

demands placed by such environments. This paper presents work-in-progress on how NFC-enhanced

mobile devices can enable intuitive service discovery by non-expert users in smart environments through

simple gestures such as touch. With this new paradigm, physical space becomes an extension of the

traditional GUI. An extensible RFID tag record is presented that can be utilised in a variety of scenarios.

The proposed approach is further illustrated through a technical realisation based on the UPnP framework.

An example use case is selected and the step-by-step process of service discovery and user interaction is

described.

1 INTRODUCTION

The increasing penetration of short-range wireless

access mobile devices and the introduction of

networked environments are giving rise to new user

interaction and service models. These models

emerge as homes and workplace environments are

gradually being transformed into smart spaces

populated with a diverse set of devices and

applications all waiting to be accessed and used. The

trend for such spaces is to provide intelligent, I-

centric service architectures. I-centric

communication considers the human behaviour as a

starting point to adapt the activities of

communication systems to it rather than being

unaware of user needs and situations. Discovery and

interaction technologies can be combined to create a

consistent user experience that significantly reduces

the administrative and configuration overhead.

Meeting these requirements poses a number of

logistical and technical challenges. Due to mobility,

more complex connectivity, small user interfaces

(UIs) and limited text input, issues such as mobile

service configuration, discovery and activation will

have to take a different path to success than the

desktop devices. In this setting, object tagging is a

powerful concept for grounding immaterial mobile

services in the real world. Radio Frequency

Identification (RFID) has received tremendous

attention lately as a promising technology for smart

space object tagging and an important enabler in the

mobile terminal business. RFID tags based on the

Near Field Communication (NFC) technology have

a modifiable state and a short operating range. These

tags can be interpreted by middleware and relevant

applications running on the mobile device itself.

This is different from Electronic Product Code

(EPC) technology. EPC tags are typically simple

object IDs with a reading range of the order of

meters, and EPC readers need to access a backbone

infrastructure in order to interpret them

semantically.

This paper proposes a method that extends the

concept of user-to-device interaction beyond the

limitations of the traditional GUI interface and

provides easy service discovery and launching. In

the new interaction paradigm, user input can be

received through touch in the same way as it is

received through mouse clicks and menu selections.

As a result, physical space becomes an extension to

the mobile device GUI and physical objects can be

mapped to virtual objects. Discovery does not

require detailed knowledge of local network

configuration or service initiation processes. An

object may be selected, clicked upon or dropped on

different application icons depending on the user’s

250

Antoniou Z. (2006).

A TOUCH IS WORTH A THOUSAND CLICKS.

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Wireless Information Networks and Systems, pages 250-257

 SciTePress

intentions and different actions are invoked. For

instance, if a user selects a picture on mobile phone

X and then touches mobile phone Y, it is interpreted

as the user’s intent to share the image. If a user

selects a picture on a mobile phone and then touches

a printer, it is interpreted as the user’s intent to print

it.

The successful deployment of such pervasive

computing environments will rely on the promptness

of the self-configuring procedures and the ease of

use of the discovery process for the average user.

Many technologies were originally developed for

zero-configuration networks in controlled and

familiar environments (e.g. home, office). Recent

research has focused on the use of these

technologies in mobile computing scenarios. Some

well-known service discovery protocols are Service

Location Protocol (SLP, by IETF), Jini (a Java-

based approach by Sun), Universal Plug and Play

(UPnP, by Microsoft) and Bluetooth Service

Discovery Protocol (SDP). Currently, these

technologies lack the ability to ensure independence

from the networking layer, interoperability between

devices of different manufacturers, and cannot

provide a complete solution for the easy, secure and

intuitive interaction between non-expert users and

services:

• They require manual intervention and are

typically deployed in traditional network

topologies where trained users work through

powerful hosts (Heidermann, 1998), (Misra,

2001).

• Discovering services often implies performing

multicast searches over wireless interfaces.

Potentially, this can result in long lists of

available services and devices.

• Even in cases where the user has identified the

type or friendly name for a service, a search

may still be necessary in order to launch it.

• The user is required to setup suitable network

access in order to reach the desired service.

The proposed approach enables a non-expert user to

discover and use the desired service through a one-

step process by touching dedicated service access

points, thus, eliminating the need for multiple

manual steps and multicast searches.

The paper is organised as follows. Section 2

gives a brief overview of the NFC technology.

Section 3 summarises prior literature. Section 4

introduces an interaction model based on the touch

paradigm and discusses its role as a powerful

enabler in mobile terminal services. Section 5

presents the service discovery approach, the NFC

tag record structure and the technical realization

through the UPnP framework. Finally, section 6

concludes the paper.

2 WHY NFC TECHNOLOGY?

Though RFID technology has, traditionally, been

used in industrial and logistics-related applications,

it is well suited for automatic service discovery and

configuration. User applications have been limited,

focusing on payments at points-of-sale and

contactless public transport tickets. Nokia, Philips

and Sony recently established the Near Field

Communication (NFC) Forum to promote the use of

contact-less short-range technologies in a variety of

consumer applications (NFC Forum). Bringing two

NFC devices together should engage the wireless

devices’ interfaces so that they can (a) exchange

data purely over NFC or (b) exchange configuration

parameters in order to link in a peer-to-peer network

over another wireless medium. A proximity RFID

technology operating at the unregulated band of

13.56 MHz with an operating distance of 0-10cm

has been chosen. Reasons for this include

compatibility with existing payment and ticketing

solutions, maturity and availability of technology

and parameters, such as size and power

consumption. Due to the very short operating range

the usage paradigm of such NFC systems resembles

a touch gesture. Technology miniaturization makes

it feasible to integrate NFC functionality into

consumer products and mobile devices and it is well

positioned to revolutionise the user experience.

3 RELATED WORK

This section summarises selected publications in the

area of RFID-enhanced service discovery. One

approach has been to explore the integration of

RFID technology with Web services. In (Kerer) the

authors present a presence-aware infrastructure in

order to implement a committee meeting scenario.

RFID tags are attached to the devices of the meeting

attendees and they are detected when they enter the

meeting room. The information on the tags is used

as input to the presence manager, the authentication

and personalization services and the persistent

repository, all of which create a collaborative

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environment. In (Romer, 2003) the authors analyse

example use cases such as Smart Tool Box, Smart

Medicine Cabinet, Smart Agenda, RFID Chef and

Smart Playing Cards in order to extract generic

design concepts. They present two prototype

frameworks based on Jini and Web services. Tags

are attached to physical objects which hold pointers

to their virtual counterparts. The prototype

architecture uses RFID interfaces to periodically

scan the surroundings for tagged objects. When a

tagged object is detected, it is registered, mapped to

its virtual counterpart, its activity is logged and

associated executables are run based on the

application. Though there are several similarities,

both (Kerer) and (Romer, 2003) focus on a very

different usage model than the one proposed in this

paper, which is driven by explicit user actions.

The proposed approach in this paper is closely

aligned with (but independently explored from)

Elope as described in (Pering, 2005). Both

architectures investigate how RFID-enhanced

physical objects can be discovered and their

associated services launched through RFID-

enhanced mobile devices. One distinct difference is

that Elope focuses on a web-based service discovery

framework, whereas this paper integrates RFID

technology with the UPnP framework. Again, the

details of the data representation on the tag are not

discussed in (Pering, 2005).

In (Bettstetter, 2000) mobile devices act as the

mediator between the user and RFID-augmented

physical objects. The tags contain data that trigger

context events in the system (referred to as

CAPNET-based middleware). The primary focus of

(Bettstetter, 2000) is on usability tests, the users’

perception of visually marked RFID tags, the social

acceptance of a touch-based interaction model, and

the users’ feedback on security concerns and the

user interface. This paper places a stronger emphasis

on the design of the middleware architecture, the

technical realization through the UPnP technology

and the details of the data representation on the tag

for network connectivity and service discovery (an

aspect not addressed in (Bettstetter, 2000)).

Passive RFID tags and Bluetooth nodes are used

in (Siegemund, 2003) to augment everyday products

and objects. Bluetooth nodes are attached to RFID

scanners and they are used as mobile access points

allowing data stored on a passive tag (e.g. product

codes) to access the background infrastructure in

order to be semantically interpreted. The focus of

(Siegemund, 2003) is on logistics-driven use cases

such as Smart Product Monitoring, Smart Medicine

Cabinet and Remote Interaction with Smart Objects

and Locations. In contrast, this paper focuses on

consumer-driven services such network access,

printing, faxing, teleconferencing and so on.

In (Ravendy) the authors present a middleware

platform, referred to as MSDA, that manages the

dynamic composition of networks, integrates

existing middleware protocols (e.g. Jini, UPnP), and

provides a generic service to clients for performing

service discovery. MSDA-aware clients can connect

with services in different discovery domains through

ad-hoc networks, hotspots or Internet/Cellular

networks. The intended user interaction model is

different from the proposed method in this paper. In

(Ravendy) users can discover a new service by

reading an RFID tag but additional manual steps are

necessary. The user needs to initiate a search for an

available service in the network that can interpret

and process the description read from the RFID tag.

The type of RFID technology used and the tag data

representation are not discussed.

An RFID-enhanced framework for intelligent

products is presented in (Bajic). The key

technologies utilised are RFID and UPnP as in this

paper. The focus, though, is on logistics and

production processes and the RFID technology is

based on EPC standards. Objects are enhanced with

UPnP functionality. RFID sensing or direct UPnP

message exchange invokes the service discovery

process by providing the object ID. The example

case study is a warehouse management system.

In (Want, 1999) RFID tags of very small

capacity (a few bytes) are affixed to physical objects

containing a simple ID. The tag reader scans the

object ID, determines the current application context

and provides the appropriated feedback. The use

cases focus on how RFID-enhanced objects can be

used to present information on a wireless handheld

device. However, this approach does not enable

services to access data stored in mobile devices.

4 THE TOUCH PARADIGM

Users do not want to employ technology but rather

to interact with their environment. Even though

mobile phones have become a commodity, a major

part of mobile applications and services is hardly

used by today’s consumers. For example, basic

functions such as calling or text messaging are easy

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to use and have been widely adopted. In contrast,

browsing or file sharing require complex

configurations and setup procedures and are less

popular at present. In this work:

 The touch paradigm creates an intuitive user

interaction model. It allows for fast, convenient and

intuitive user interaction with smart objects, devices,

services and other users.

 Service discovery provides a unique

opportunity to boost the adoption of mobile services,

in particular wireless proximity services. Rather than

require new models of behaviour, social interaction

in proximity can build on familiar human activities

such as giving, sharing, greeting, self-expression,

acknowledgement and so on.

4.1 Context Awareness

User activities in proximity can exploit the benefits

of context information relevant to service discovery.

Context information enables the right services to be

delivered to the right user at the right time. Objects

pertaining to a certain context can be active or

passive at given moments in time depending on the

situation of the user. Proximity-based services can

be categorised in four context-aware categories:

a) People in places: social interaction,

communication and collaboration in close physical

range. Example applications are face-to-face content

sharing, ad-hoc collaboration and group formation.

b) Me and my stuff: creation, management

and storage of personal and 3

party content with

particular focus on the home environment. For

example, personal mobile devices (e.g. phones,

PDAs) can access and control services and content

on networked home devices (e.g. laptop, audio

system, home appliances).

c) Smart spaces: accessing local content and

services relevant to a particular location. Location-

based services can find application both in the

workplace and in the consumer market. For the

former, an example is personal mobile devices

discovering and interacting with other devices in a

specific room or building (e.g. printers, projectors).

Examples for the latter are service activation at

point-of-sale locations and content download (e.g.

download a movie preview from a poster).

d) Safe consumption: research and purchase

of goods, content and services with perceived

security and trust. All transactions have security and

privacy requirements but special attention is needed

when purchases and monetary transactions are

involved such as ticketing and electronic wallet

applications.

Location is an important element of context

information that can be exploited. NFC technology

can provide a convenient way to access location-

aware, mobile services and content through hot

spots, e.g. NFC-equipped devices could easily read

tags at point-of-sale locations. This can serve to

compliment cellular coverage and provide the

illusion of full mobility, thus, making it less

necessary to assure real-time full mobility for all

applications. Yet, commercial success of this

business model is dependent on whether users are

willing to wait to connect, pricing and sufficient

coverage with clearly marked hot spots.

4.2 UI Interaction

Enabled by NFC technology, service discovery has a

direct impact on the design of smart and intuitive

user interfaces (UIs) for pervasive computing.

Currently, similar point-and-click interfaces are not

flexible. Most RFID readers, bar code scanners and

IR remote controls are single purpose devices. In

some cases, IR can be used for multiple purposes,

but the interface can hardly be characterized as

intuitive, or point-and-click.

Traditional graphical user interface displays

receive input through mouse clicks and menu

selections. With the NFC-touch paradigm the

physical space (e.g. a room) becomes an extension

to the GUI of a mobile device, where physical

objects (i.e. NFC-enabled objects and devices) can

be touched upon in order to activate associated

services and applications in the same manner as

clicking on an icon on a conventional display. An

object may be selected, clicked upon or dropped on

different applications, which invokes different

actions. Three key modes of interaction are shown in

Table 1.

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Table 1: Key interaction modes.

MODE DESCRIPTION EXAMPLE

Select selection is H/W

independent via the

traditional GUI (e.g.

mouse click, menu list)

or NFC touch.

Selected objects can be

interrogated or trigger

associated applications

user selects a

printer that he/she

visually discovers

in a room to check

its properties (e.g.

‘network access’,

‘is it a colour

printer?’).

Select-

and-

launch

select an object &

launch application.

Associate metadata to

physical objects by

various means (e.g. bar

codes, tags, service

description).

user touches the tag

on a movie DVD

and the browser is

launched with the

movie URL as an

input.

Select-

drag-and-

drop

select object A, drag it

to resource B, drop it

on B & resource B

launches associated

application. This event

pattern associates an

object with an

application that it is

not normally

associated with.

use a mobile phone

to transfer a file

from a laptop to a

local printer. The

phone-laptop touch

gesture represents

the file select-and-

drag. The phone-

printer touch

gesture represents

the drop.

5 PROOF-OF-CONCEPT

ARCHITECTURE

This paper introduces a method for enabling easy

service discovery in smart spaces by NFC-equipped

mobile devices. There are two critical players:

a) The smart space devices: these are NFC-

enabled devices, either physically accessible by the

user (e.g. a projector), or accessible through service

access points (e.g. touch here to send a fax). Their

service discovery parameters (also referred to as

service discovery record) are stored in an NFC tag

that a user device can read when it is within the

scanning range. A tag format is designed for this

service discovery record. The tag design is

compatible with the guidelines provided by the NFC

Forum. Additional backbone network devices such

as network access points (NAPs), configuration

servers (DNS, DHCP), AAA servers and so on may

provide other necessary functionality. The task of

setting up and configuring smart space environments

is out of the scope of this paper and it is addressed in

(Antoniou, Krishnamurthi & Reynolds, 2006).

b) The user devices: they are NFC-enabled

mobile devices with one or more wireless network

interfaces (e.g. WLAN, Bluetooth,

GPRS/WCDMA).

The rest of this section presents the architectural

design for the proof-of-concept prototype currently

under development (Antoniou & Varadan, 2006). Its

technical realization features the integration of NFC

technology with the UPnP framework. The security

aspects of this work are addressed separately in

Shakhshir & Kalofonos, 2006), (Antoniou &

Kalofonos, 2006).

5.1 The User Experience

Anna is at the departure’s lounge awaiting her flight.

She wants to print a copy of a report she has stored

on her mobile phone to read in the plane. She locates

a smart printer. She selects the report file (e.g. by

highlighting it) and touches her phone to the printer

hotspot (tag). Instantly, the printer is added to her

list of available services and a connection is

established between the two devices. By having

selected the report file first and then touching the

printer, the phone deduces the intention of the user,

which is to send the file to this printer. Without any

further action by the user, the printer control

application is launched on the mobile phone and the

report is printed. Through the printer control

application UI, Anna can check the printer

properties and the status of the printing job.

It should be noted that the proposed method can

potentially facilitate remote access to previously

discovered devices as well. Assume that Anna has

already discovered a fax service at the airport in the

same manner as she discovered the printer. She can

launch the fax service multiple times by clicking on

the fax icon that appears in her mobile phone UI.

5.2 The Tag Record

The NFC tag record design is a flexible and

extensible structure (Figure 1) that can be used to

store discovery parameters of smart network

devices, services and NAPs for a variety of use

cases

. The information exchanged is the Payload.

The Payload contains a Header and a record list with

NFC standardization is ongoing, hence naming

conventions and record formats are still evolving.

An industry consortium created by Microsoft.

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one or more records. The Header contains the length

of the Payload and it is used to determine how much

data must be read from a tag. Each record is a

sequence of three elements, a triplet of (Type,

Content-Length, Content). The record Type

identifies the structure and semantics of the record

by providing the Type name. For the case of service

discovery, a suitable choice would be the discovery

protocol name and version number. The Content-

Length identifies the length of the record Content.

The record Content contains the actual data. The

example tag record of Figure 1 is further explained

in the rest of this section.

Header

Re c o r d

Typ e

Re c o r d

Length

Re c o r d

Content

Re c o r d

Length

Re c o r d

Typ e

Re c o r d

Content

SSI D

Public

Ke y

NTS

Cache

Control

USN Se r v e r NT Locat i o n

NAP access record UPnP device record

WLAN

SSDP / 1 . 0

Header

Re c o r d

Typ e

Re c o r d

Length

Re c o r d

Content

Re c o r d

Length

Re c o r d

Typ e

Re c o r d

Content

SSI D

Public

Ke y

SSI D

Public

Ke y

NTS

Cache

Control

USN Se r v e r NT Locat i o nNTS

Cache

Control

USN Se r v e r NT Locat i o n

NAP access record UPnP device record

WLAN

SSDP / 1 . 0

Figure 1: Tag record: UPnP service discovery via a

WLAN.

5.3 UPnP Overview

Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of protocols

including the Simple Service Discovery Protocol

(SSDP), the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)

and the General Event Notification Architecture

(GENA) originally developed by Microsoft

Corporation and currently under development by the

Universal Plug and Play Forum

. UPnP standardizes

the protocols spoken between clients (called control

points) and services. It leverages existing standards

such as TCP/IP, HTTP and XML.

Devices, services and control points are the basic

abstractions of the UPnP device architecture. The

device model is hierarchical. In a compound device,

the root device and any embedded devices are

discoverable. Clients can address a root or an

embedded device independently. Soap servers in the

device act as entry points for interacting and

controlling it. Each service has a set of methods or

actions with a set of optional input/output

parameters and return values. The control point is

the client and the device is the server. Control points

can invoke actions on services. All UPnP devices

that conform to UPnP Forum specifications follow

the same basic pattern of operation: addressing,

description, discovery, control, eventing and

presentation. SSDP is used for the service discovery

process to (a) announce a device’s presence to

others and (b) search for devices and services. A

device sends a multicast message to either advertise

its presence to control points or to search for

services in a UPnP network. Devices that hear this

message respond with a unicast response message.

UPnP uses XML to describe device features and

capabilities. For instance, the aforementioned

advertisement message contains a URL that points

to an XML file in the network describing the UPnP

device’s capability. By retrieving this XML file,

other devices can learn about the advertised device’s

features, control it and interact with it.

5.4 SSDP Announcement for the

Smart Device

An example SSDP presence announcement for a

printer is shown in Table 2. A brief explanation of

the various fields is given next. For a detailed

description the reader is referred to (UPnP),

(Printer). The value of the NTS field identifies this

SSDP message as a presence announcement of a

new device or service. The Cache-Control field

specifies the duration that the presence

announcement is valid. The control point (user)

device caches the complete service discovery record

for the time frame defined by Cache-Control. The

USN field provides the device Universally Unique

ID (UUID). It may contain other information about

the device type (e.g. root device, device type,

service type). Server field provides information on

the operating system of the device, the product name

and version. The NT field has a potential search

target description, i.e. how the control point can

search for the discovered device or service. Finally,

the Location field contains the URL from which the

UPnP device description document can be retrieved.

This presence announcement is included in the

printer tag record as shown in Figure 1. The printer

record is of Type ‘SSDP/1.0’, i.e. the service

discovery protocol used. Its Content field consists of

the six sub-records, namely NTS, Cache-Control,

USN, Server, NT and Location URL.

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Table 2: SSDP presence announcement.

Field Example Data

NT: Specifies the search

target value

"urn:schemas-upnp-

org:device:Printer:1"

USN: Concatenation of

device ID and NT value

"uuid:0e2fc7b3-4c09-4665-

b4aef6f90448ba99::urn:schem

as-upnp-org:device:Printer:1"

Server: Concatenation of

OS name & version,

UPnP/1.0, product name

& version

Microsoft-Windows-NT/5.1

UPnP/1.0 UPnP-Device-

Host/1.0

Location: URL of root

device description

document

"http://192.168.64.11:53911/u

pnp/device/Printer.xml"

Cache-Control: Number

of seconds the

announcement is valid

1800 seconds

NTS: ‘alive’ or ‘bye-

bye’

ssdp:alive

5.5 SSDP Announcement for the

NAP

For this example implementation, it is assumed that

the printer device is connected to the network

through a WLAN NAP. In this case, the WLAN

record is of type ‘WLAN’ and its Content field

contains the SSID and (optionally) a Public Key. If

more than one NAP with the same SSID value are

available, the user device can connect to the access

point with the best signal strength. In cases where no

connectivity parameters are specified, it can be

assumed that the advertised device is accessible

through the public internet. The setup and

configuration process between the printer and the

NAP are addressed in more detail (Antoniou,

Krishnamurthi & Reynolds, 2006).

5.6 NFC-based UPnP Service

Discovery

Anna’s select-and-touch action triggers a series of

steps (Figure 2). Anna selects the report she wants to

print. This event selection is stored in the Activation

module. Next, she touches the printer tag with the

NFC interface on her mobile device. The printer tag

is read and passed to the Direct Access module in

the middleware layer. The tag is parsed and the two

records are extracted. These records are then

processed in sequence. First, the ‘WLAN’ NAP

record is passed to the Connectivity module to setup

the network connection. Secondly, the Service

Discovery SSDP/1.0’ record is passed to the Service

Discovery module which triggers the UPnP

discovery process. This process is equivalent to the

UPnP engine receiving a presence announcement

through a multicast message. When completed a

‘Discovery Complete’ message is sent to the

Activation module.

If the user device were in the default UI

application when the printer tag was touched, the

printer would be discovered and its icon would be

added to the available devices. In this case, a

selection event has taken place prior to touching the

printer tag. As a result, the Activation module

launches the printer control point application with

the selected object (report) as input for printing.

Mi d dl ew ar e

RFI D i n t e r f ac e

Se r v i c e Di sc o v e r y

module

Direct Access

module

Connectivity

module

Act i vat io n

module

Application

Se l e c t i o n

Pr i nt er ’s RFID t ag d at a

Device discovery in progress

Connectivity

parameters

Discovery complete

Dev ice Ref ere nce

Touch

printer

Connection established

Service Discovery announcement

Discove ry co m pl et ed &

Device Reference

Sh o w s t a t us

m essag e

Decode pri nter’s tag data in to Connectivit y

record &

Service Discovery record

Establish short range

connection t o be used

susequent ly

Co m p l e t e Se r v i c e

Discov ery

Show status

message

Se l e c t

report

Launch printer application

with selected report

Printing application comes

to t he UI foreground

Figure 2: The service discovery process.

6 CONCLUSIONS

Technology miniaturization has made it feasible to

integrate NFC functionality into consumer mobile

device and has given birth to the Touch paradigm.

User input is received through straightforward

gestures such as touching or pointing and clicking as

part of everyday activities. An efficient UI design

can potentially replace sequences of multiple button

clicks and menu selections by a simple touch or

point-and-click action in order to complete a task.

By exploiting the benefits of this paradigm, it is

possible to enhance existing service discovery

protocols in order to create smart space

architectures.

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This paper presents work-in-progress on how

service discovery and interaction can be simplified

through the use of NFC technology. An extensible

tag record is proposed with application in a variety

of service discovery scenarios and protocols. NFC-

enhanced middleware is designed to (a) retrieve tag

information over the NFC interface (b) perform

service discovery and connection establishment and

interaction with the discovered devices. The

proposed architecture integrates NFC technology

with the UPnP framework and does not require

detailed knowledge of network configuration or

service initiation processes.

Figure 3: Prototype HW Setup.

The proof-of-concept implementation is

currently in progress and will be presented in a

follow-up paper. It is developed for a Nokia 9500

Communicator handset in Symbian OS. The NFC

interface is provided through an internally

developed prototype, which is connected to the

phone through a USB cable (

Figure 3). The NFC

interface allows reading from and writing to Mifare

Ultralight (48 bytes) and Mifare Standard tags

(1Kbytes/ 4Kbytes). Future research directions will

explore other service discovery frameworks, as well

as, content sharing.

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