MS Researchers Develop Acoustic Data Transfer System For Phones

angry tapir writes "Smartphones that support NFC have been making their way onto the market, but many handsets still don't support the wireless technology. As an alternative, Microsoft researchers have prototyped a system that instead uses a phone's microphone and speaker to transmit and receive data. The P2P data transfer system uses a novel technique of 'self-jamming' to stop nefarious third parties from monitoring transfers, and the researchers believe it's more secure than standard NFC communications. No word on whether it sounds like the squeal of a 56k modem."

Comments

Ah, the circle of technology

[SDrag0n]

It's amazing what comes back as "new developments"

So they reinvented chirp.io

[Anonymous Coward]

So they reinvented chirp.io ?

And they call it

[Black Parrot]

"modem"

Re:And they call it

[krlynch]

I've always found it interesting that "modem" and "modern" are so easy to confuse in most fonts....

Re:And they call it

[Russ1642]

It's a keming problem.

Re:And they call it

[orgelspieler]

I think you mean: That's a wooshing problern.

Acoustic couplers' nostalgia...

[Anonymous Coward]

GREETINGS PROFESSOR FALKEN.

Already done

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9217790/Sound_based_system_promises_chipless_NFC_now

Already exists

[3vi1]

You can already transfer music between phones like this, but it's quite lossy depending on the quality of your speaker.

Why would it need a carrier tone?

[mlts]

Unlike a modem that requires a carrier tone, two acoustic devices that need to send a couple frames of data (such as a Diffie-Hellman exchange) could easily send and receive the data with a few bursts. DACs and ADCs are good enough to be able to discern the encoded static, find errors and correct them, and pass the decoded packets along. This wouldn't be fast, but it would be good enough for creating a shared secret or just validating each other's public keys so future communications can be reliability secured without need of a CA.

Return of the acoustic modem

[Geoffrey.landis]

Wow, return of the acoustic modem. That really is a trip back in time. Was cutting-edge technology, back in the era of blinking-light consoles, when telephones were hardwired into the wall.

Ah, nostalgia for the tech of yore.

Re:Return of the acoustic modem

[goombah99]

Grandpa here.
      My recollection is that paper tapes and punchcard readers where a lot faster than cassette tapes for loading in programs. The reason cassettes were nice is that that the cost of the reader hardware was cheap--you probably already had a casstte player. and the results were compact. In my experience the paper tapes were the most durable. the tapes tended to go bad on you or not work between different machines with different settings. If you dropped your punch card deck it could get scrambled. the paper tapes were compact and reliable.

Re:Return of the acoustic modem

[farrellj]

I just found the information on the device I have...it's called the Konexx KOUPLER, and it's pretty snazzy! Their web site claims speeds up to 26.4 Kbps. But I guess that is under ideal conditions...Web site says they still sell it, and it's $150 US.

More information here: http://www.konexx.com/koupler.htm

p.s. I have no connection with these guys other than the fact I have used their product in the past, and found it to be a wonderful part of a Road Warriors's toolkit!

Re:Return of the acoustic modem

[sjames]

Sit down right here sonney and let me tell you a story :-)

In the days of 300-1200 baud modems, the modem sat on a desk connected to the terminal (usually) by a serial cable. There were indeed blinkinlights on the front. Some terminals had the modem built-in on top, but you still had the blinkenlights. You would pick up the phone, dial it (and it WAS often a rotary phone) and when you heard the squeel, you shoved the handset into the rubber cups on top of the modem and watch the blinkinlights to see if it made a good connection.

Re:Return of the acoustic modem

[OhSoLaMeow]

...If you dropped your punch card deck it could get scrambled.

For me it was when you dropped your punch card deck, it would be scrambled.

That's why I always punched sequence numbers in col 73-80. If the deck is dropped, a few minutes in the card sorter and the problem is fixed.

Re:Return of the acoustic modem

[Bing Tsher E]

If you dropped your punch card deck it could get scrambled. the paper tapes were compact and reliable.

Better yet, punched card readers had a habit of crunching up the first card on the deck fairly often.

The first card at the Batch Terminal that I used at the U of M back in the late 70's was the password card. So it was fairly common to be able to dig in the trash can next to the unattended Remote Batch Terminal in the History Building and find someone's mangled password card. Which could then be read/decoded and the password used to run my programs. Even better yet, the ID/password could be used in the terminal room in the basement of Lind Hall to log onto an interactive session. 300 baud on an ASR-33 teletype. For free.

Amazing Development

[elysiuan]

It's almost like they're modulating a signal and then demodulating it. I wonder if there's a name for this sort of thing.

Security issue may be flawed

[goombah99]

First this is a wonderful idea so I don't want to put it down as a useful contribution to the low bandwidth limited distance problem for comunications. Where the authors seem to go south here is the huge time they devote in the article to touting that NFC has no physical security and their system does via "jamSecure". Unless I'm missing something there's no reason, other than changing the standard, that radio based NFC could not also implement JamSecure and even do it better. The idea of JamSecure is that both ends of the communitcation channel transmit at the same time, anyone listening in hears the sum. If one of the emitters is sending simply random noise then the sum is randomized. Yet because the receiver knows what they are emitting they can subtract it out. Don't see why NFC cant do that. Also I don't see why having two (or more) microphones in different locations on an eaves dropper doesn't ruin the addition the encryption is relying on. At least with NFC you can have the transmitters be spatially diverse too, with sound that's harder.

But for very close by communications using existing tech, why not use the screen and the camera? Each phone looks at the others screen and reads it. bandwith becomes the screen refreshrate time the number of resolvable pixels. Presumably at a meter or so that should be close to or better than sound in band width.