NFC-based mobile middleware for intuitive user interaction with security in smart homes

Home networks and networked consumer electronic devices are increasingly becoming a part of our everyday lives. One of the challenges in designing smart home technology is making these systems secure and, at the same time, easy-to-use for non-expert consumers. We believe that mobile devices equipped with a “touch” network interface and corresponding middleware are ideal for enabling users to intuitively setup and manage the security of their smart homes. In this paper, we propose such a middleware for mobile phones based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. We propose a mobile middleware architecture based on a higher-level UserInteraction with Security (UI-SEC) middleware, called IntuiSec, and a lower-level NFC middleware, called iTouch. We present the proposed overall architecture, with particular emphasis on the integration modules, as well as, the detailed design of the necessary NFC records that are exchanged over RF. Finally, we present our experience with an initial implementation of parts of the proposed middleware using actual NFC hardware and Symbian-based mobile phones.