A light based wireless communication technology known as Li-Fi (light fidelity) is found to be a 100 times faster than current Wi-Fi networks.
Professor Harald Haas from Edinburgh University invented a wireless broadband technology in 2011 that uses LEDs to send data a hundred times faster than today’s wi-fi networks. The system is also more energy efficient than wi-fi and has 10,000 times the bandwidth. It is believed that the Li-Fi wireless technology will compliment existing wi-fi systems.
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Stuff reports:
Wi-fi uses unlicensed 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz radio spectrum. Li-fi uses visible light between 400 and 800 terahertz. As the number of wi-fi devices proliferates, overcrowding could render wi-fi unusable. Li-fi could help ease this congestion.
Transmitting data using light isn’t anything new. Back in 1880, Alexander Graham Bell (the inventor of the telephone) transmitted audio using visible light.
What is new with li-fi is the use of specialised LED driver chips. These can dim and brighten LEDs encoding data much like a fast form of Morse code. The entire process happens so fast that it is completely imperceptible to humans.
At its simplest, a li-fi system consists of an LED transmitter and solar panel receiver system. It might sound basic, but it works, and it is fast. In the lab, li-fi has clocked in at speeds of up to 224 gigabits per second. Back in the real world, data speeds from a single 5Mw micro LED are around a still zippy 1-3 gigabit per second.
It’s also secure. wi-fi signals can penetrate most walls to pass beyond the boundary of your home or business and can be intercepted. Light doesn’t penetrate walls so securing a li-fi network can be as simple as drawing the blinds.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that staying online with li-fi would need the lights left on. Haas’s li-fi system is so sensitive that he’s demonstrated it working with LED bulbs dimmed to such low levels that they appear turned off.
Commercial interest is mounting. Velmenni, an Estonian company, has already developed a commercial version of the technology. They’ve already trialled it in offices and industrial environments in Estonia. The Velmenni version of li-fi has recorded speeds of up to 1GBps.
This is up to 100-times faster than the current crop of wi-fi technologies.
pureLiFi YouTube video:
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speed is not my concern … this sounds like a much safer tech than wifi on your DNA . anyone know?
speed is not my concern … this sounds like a much safer tech than wifi on your DNA . anyone know?
Exactly, well said pruttmaster! The question is: why has the article leaned only onto speed, speed, speed, when the real issue is health? We should all know how the wi-fi spots fever is damaging to all life everywhere in the world, especially in schools and hospitals to say the least, so we should be protesting and avidly seeking/demanding alternatives that could be implemented ASAP and not at some remote day in the future when our devices “catch up” while we’ve given up our lives away waiting and waning. Can someone please supply info? An while we’re at it, can you say if a device can be made to attach to existing devices to use this tech and turn off wi-fi for good?
Exactly, well said pruttmaster! This is exciting (and long overdue…) news on such a critical issue, but the real question is: why has the article leaned only onto speed, speed, speed, when the real issue is health? We should all know how the wi-fi spots fever is damaging to all life everywhere in the world, especially in schools and hospitals to say the least, so we should be protesting and avidly seeking/demanding alternatives that could be implemented ASAP and not at some remote day in the future when our devices “catch up” while we’ve given up our lives away waiting and waning in the meantime. Can someone please supply this missing info? And while we’re at it, can you say if a device can be made to attach to existing devices to use this tech and turn off wi-fi for good?
But, if they’re going from wi-fi to li-fi on a network, surely the wi-fi has a limiting factor.
But, if they’re going from wi-fi to li-fi on a network, surely the wi-fi has a limiting factor.