Using NFC to Speed Up Wireless Network Connection

• Main Authors: Jhe-Wei Chiou, 邱哲偉
• Other Authors: Kuang-Hui Chi
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/56483304108333054197

碩士 === 國立雲林科技大學 === 電機工程系 === 103 === In the past few years, Android platforms are becoming more and more prevalent in our daily lives. In 2010, Google released Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) in support of Near Field Communication (NFC). Google then unveiled an application called Google Wallet in 2011. At present, Taiwan's new construction companies have adopted NFC as part of security management for residential premises. Japan has also employed NFC to enable passengers to access MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) services with their smartphones. Today, as a norm, smartphone manufacturers such as Google, Sony, HTC, Samsung, LG and Nokia have their products embedded with NFC. The development of NFC related applications has received ever-growing attention. The thesis identifies two problems. First, NFC application does not appear common in Taiwan. Although most smartphones have built-in NFC chips, few people know how to use the technology. Second, the connection process between mobile devices and Wi-Fi access points (APs) that requires user’s manual input inconvenience users somehow, so we propose a solution to speed up the connection process. To this end, we develop an NFC application over Android in two aspects. One is designed for the network administrator to enable an NFC tag to store Wi-Fi configuration information (e.g., SSID, password, cryptographic mode). As soon as an NFC-capable smartphone scans the NFC tag, this application will read the information from the tag automatically and connect the Android handset to the designated AP straightway. Second, in the context of multiple APs, a smartphone can pre-read and keep information from NFC tags in local storage. Our application will then sort candidate APs within radio range in order of received signal strength. Accordingly, the user can choose to associate with a suitable target AP anytime. We conducted field tests to examine how fast our development reacts in different network settings. Experiments show that our NFC application is of practical use for reducing connection time effectively.