“IoT”: Transfer data over ‘Sound’
As the need for innovation and technological evolution accelerates during the pandemic times, the digital world is witnessing an unprecedented growth. It has become imperative for the businesses to leverage technologies for day-to-day operations during the economy “Lock Up” or “Unlock” series.
As you know, data has been the buzzword for quite some time but imagine its digital context with IoT. Digital innovations are continuously transforming our world and it is exciting to learn about one such technology that enables Data transferring, Authentication and Information verification in a secure manner.
That’s not it! All of this is done over sound, so Yes! it is “Data over Sound”.
“Data over Sound”, what’s that?
A process by which information is converted to sound frequencies that is inaudible to humans. These are generated via device microphone or pre-recorded audio and transmitted via Speakers.
These sound frequencies let the pairing-free devices to interconnect without any dependency on of QR, NFC, ZigBee, Lora, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. The “Data over Sound” can empower us to create the network independent IoT environments without any connectivity issues.
If used wisely, then this technology can contribute significantly to finding the digital solutions to authentication and secure data transfers.
Lifecycle of “Data over Sound”
The application uses the received information for the required actions like Authentication or information viewing in the following manner –
- Encoding: data or information is encoded via the specified Algorithm.
- Transmission: data is transmitted over sound via speakers and microphone.
- Decoding: received audio is decoded into actual information or data.
Some of the projects to check out are:
- Chirp (acquired by Sonos): Implemented by India’s Bus Service App “Shuttl”.
- Google Pay earlier version “Google Tez” India used Voice QR functionality.
- Sonarax: Offering multiple IoT based solutions for connectivity and location tracing.
- ToneTag: Digital payments via Sound.
This technology has a very wide range of application like payments or ticket verification at movie theaters, trains, airports and even unlocking your door locks. You could say it all depends on the level of individual’s creativity!
Like you have heard, technology is a double-edged sword. You should read about the Dolphin attack and Audio Steganography that uses the similar technology to extract your confidential information.
Trivia about my first-hand experience of this technology: During a short business trip to New Delhi last year, I came across one of the well implemented sound authentications for ticket checking when I opted for the “Shuttl” travel pass.
~AshishSecDev
