The
Infrared Data Association (
IrDA) is an industry-driven interest group that was founded in 1993 by around 50 companies. IrDA provides specifications for a complete set of protocols for wireless infrared communications, and the name "IrDA" also refers to that set of protocols. The main reason for using IrDA had been wireless data transfer over the “last one meter” using point-and-shoot principles. Thus, it has been implemented in portable devices such as mobile telephones, laptops, cameras, printers, medical devices. Main characteristics of this kind of
wireless optical communication is physically secure data transfer, line-of-sight (
LOS) and very low bit error rate (
BER) that makes it very efficient.