WiFi vs Bluetooth vs NFC vs RFID

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There are 4 types of wireless communication specifications in the world: WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC and RFID.

Wi-Fi:

The official name is Wi-Fi, which are popular in our life. Wi-Fi are used in most of wireless environment such as computers, cell phone, router, wireless devices;

• - Coverage Range: 35 m ~ 120m or more, There is a world record is over 382 km that was happened in June 2007, which is amazing, and unbelievable;
• - Frequency: 2.4G Hz, 5G Hz
• - Data rate: 144Mbps ~ 250Mbps
• - 2-way communication

**Bluetooth:** Bluetooth usually is used in shorter distance communication such as Bluetooth speaker, Bluetooth earphone etc.;

• - Coverage Range:  around 1m ~ 50m, but class 1 Bluetooth could be up to 100m
• - Frequency: 2.4G Hz
• - Data rate: 3Mbps ~ 24Mbps
• - 2-way communication

**NFC:** NFC is Near Field Communication. It is an old communication specification and almost ignored by people. but with the smart phone market growing, the NFC is more and more popular, for example, people realized NFC is the most security way for personal payment and private data switching;

• - Coverage Range:  < 20cm
• - Frequency: 13.56M Hz
• - Data rate: 100Kbps ~ 425Kbps
• - 2-way communication
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**RFID:** RFID is Radio-frequency identification. It can be used on tags, readers, and software for RFID cards, labels, fobs, tracking system.

• - Coverage Range:  10cm ~ 1m,  or even up to 100m
• - Frequency: multiple
• - Data rate: multiple
• - 1-way communication