NFC communication through metal

Abstract

Although NFC has reached a wide market coverage in the field today, applications involving through-metal communication without any slots or holes are physically blocked as the alternating H-field cannot pass through a conductor. We investigate through-metal communication using acoustic wave technology and practically show, it can work well for signals and protocols used in NFC communication. We discuss relevant aspects for this new technology that can open up new application fields for NFC and we present a miniaturized prototype acoustic ID tag based on direct chip attach technology.