WHAT IS Li-Fi ?
Hub Telegram: Li-Fi technology is a ground-breaking light-based communication technology, which makes use of light waves instead of radio technology to deliver data. Coined by Prof. Harald Haas,Li-Fi is a subset of optical wireless communications and can be a complement to RF communication, or a replacement in contexts of data broadcasting.
It is wireless and uses visible light communication or infra-red and near ultraviolet (instead of radio frequency waves) spectrum, part of optical wireless communications technology, which carries much more information, and has been proposed as a solution to the RF-bandwidth limitations. A complete solution includes an industry led standardization process.
THE TECHNOLOGY
The world might eventually have to shift its reliance on Wi-Fi to Li-Fi, an alternative technology that scientists say can reach speeds of 1 Gbps in real-world use — 100 times faster than average Wi-Fi speeds. At those speeds, you could download a high-definition movie in just a few seconds.
Li-Fi transmits data using LED lights, which flicker on and off within nanoseconds, imperceptible to the human eye. It was invented in 2011, and in the lab, has been able to reach a mindblowing 224 Gbps.
Besides Velmenni, several companies have already sprung up to bring Li-Fi to customers, like Oledcomm and pureLiFi, the latter established by Li-Fi’s inventor himself, Harald Haas.
Both companies offer kits to early adopters to install Li-Fi networks in the office and home, and pureLiFi claims speeds of 10 Mbps with his current offering.
Li-Fi uses the visible light spectrum instead of radio waves to transmit data. You can’t just use any old light source, however, as it requires the light to modulate its signal in order to create a data stream. Currently, this is done with standard LED bulbs equipped with a special chip, and then a special receiver capable of interpreting the light signals is attached to the receiving device.
The light modulations aren’t distracting, as they are very slight and imperceptible to the human eye. Haas said during his public introduction in 2011 at TED Global that you could even turn the light down low enough to where it would appear to be off, yet it would still transmit a signal.
In 2011, Haas had a working prototype on stage. He has since gone on to co-found a start-up called pureLiFi that offers two products for transmitting data over light.
Why this matters: While Li-Fi is not yet ready to go mainstream, it does claim to solve several problems that conventional Wi-Fi has. Chief among them is capacity. With radio waves, you have a finite amount of spectrum that is shared by all kinds of different signals. That would be a non-issue with Li-Fi, however, as the visible light spectrum is 10,000 times bigger than what we get with radio waves, according to Haas.
BENEFITS OF Li-Fi
10000 times the frequency spectrum of radio.
More secure because data cannot be intercepted without a clear line of sight.
Prevents piggybacking.
Eliminates neighboring network interference.
Unimpeded by radio interference.
Does not create interference in sensitive electronics, making it better for use in environments like hospitals and aircraft.
By using LiFi in all the lights in and around a building, the technology could enable greater area of coverage than a single WiFi router.
