Infrared – Only works in line of sight, it produces low amount of energy and is used over a short distance. An everyday example is a TV remote.
Bluetooth – Uses short wavelength UHF radio waves. Bluetooth is fast but only works over a short distance. Commonly used in phones and cars
Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) – Often used as a synonym for WLAN, Wi-Fi is a LAN technology that allows users to connect to a network using a certain radio wave.
Cellular – A communication network where the last link is wireless. The network is distributed over land areas (cells), each served by at least one fixed location transceiver (cell site).
Terrestrial Microwave – Requires line of sight and needs lots of boosters however has high (microwave) energy and will resend the message it receives multiple times. There is lots of potential interference.
Satellite – this is normally a one-way (simplex) communication and due to its distance has a weak signal. It is often used for remote locations as it spreads over a large area and is also used for GPS.
NFC (Near Field Communication) – NFC enables communication between devices when they’re touched together, or brought within a few centimetres of each other. Things with NFC capabilities (tags or phones) can interact with each other.
The integration of WLAN into medical, commercial, educational and engineering contexts would greatly increase the efficiency of data being transferred between different devices throughout the respective facilities. This would also make data transfers faster and more easily available as it also improves communications systems.
NFC tags have a multitude of uses, these include things like having people connect to your Wi-Fi by just tapping their phone to a tag instead of having to enter passwords or passphrases that take a lot of time and effort. The thing that I used my tag for was something simpler. I have my tag in my house next to the door and when I tap it with my phone, my music will start playing. This makes it easier to start playing music as I leave the house and stop it when I get home.
jmkibble 