Dhwani: secure peer-to-peer acoustic NFC

Abstract

Near Field Communication (NFC) enables physically proximate devices to communicate over very short ranges in a peer-to-peer manner without incurring complex network configuration overheads. However, adoption of NFC-enabled applications has been stymied by the low levels of penetration of NFC hardware. In this paper, we address the challenge of enabling NFC-like capability on the existing base of mobile phones. To this end, we develop Dhwani, a novel, acoustics-based NFC system that uses the microphone and speakers on mobile phones, thus eliminating the need for any specialized NFC hardware. A key feature of Dhwani is the JamSecure technique, which uses self-jamming coupled with self-interference cancellation at the receiver, to provide an information-theoretically secure communication channel between the devices. Our current implementation of Dhwani achieves data rates of up to 2.4 Kbps, which is sufficient for most existing NFC applications.