THE Internet of Things (IoT), where everyday appliances are embedded with Internet con¬nectivity, will soon turn all our gadgets into smart devices. Smart Cities, which are being developed all over the world, will allow pedestrians and vehicles seamless connectivity and smart solutions to everyday problems like traffic jams, where to park, where to shop, etc.
But in order for all these things to happen, we need massive bandwidth and high Internet speeds. And we need it to be wireless. WiFi and mobile wireless connectivity won’t be sufficient. That’s where Li-Fi comes into the picture.
Li-Fi, obviously a play on the phrase “WiFi”, stands for Light Fidelity and, as its name suggests, it provides for high-speed wireless Internet through light rather than radio waves. The term was coined by Harald Haas, a physics pro¬fessor at the University of Edinburgh who introduced it during a TED Talk in 2011.
He was doing research on this technology at the time and he envisioned a system where light bulbs could act as wireless routers. In 2012, he helped set up a company called pureLiFi to commercialise this technology. Other companies have since jumped on the Li-Fi bandwagon, most notably Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) which deals with Li-Fi.
The light bulbs used for Li-Fi are LED bulbs which can be switched on and off very quickly (unlike conven¬tional light bulbs which have a warm-up time). In fact, LEDs can be turned on and off so quickly that the human eye cannot detect it. This flickering, which happens at a rate of 10 times the speed of light coming from your TV, can represent a binary one when the LED is on, and a binary zero when the LED is off. This can be translated into data by special receivers.
Li-Fi doesn’t require a special router to create a hotspot. All you’d need is a special dongle attached to your laptop to receive the data sent out through Li- Fi. Of course later on down the road, when Li-Fi is more commonplace, you’ll likely see Li-Fi capability built into your devices like laptops, tablets and phones.
PROS AND CONS OF LIGHT
Because Li-Fi is a light-based technol¬ogy, line of sight is necessary for Internet connectivity to happen. Unlike Wi- Fi’s radio waves, which can go through objects and walls, Li-Fi’s light waves cannot. Unfortunately, that means if you were to put your future Li-Fi-enabled mobile phone inside your pocket or bag, it won’t have Internet access. This can be resolved by having back-up WiFi to pick up the slack where Li-Fi doesn’t work.
One big upside to using light rather than radio waves is bandwidth capacity. Multiple devices in the same room can use the same bandwidth with no degradation of quality, which would not be the case with WiFi. If you had hundreds or thousands of people using the same WiFi in a convention centre, Internet access would slow down to a crawl. With Li-Fi however, thousands of concurrent users would not be a problem.
Another interesting advantage of using light technology for wireless connectivity is that it’s easily containable. Radio waves goes through walls and thus is susceptible to hacking. In contrast, light waves can be contained within a room just by shutting the doors and closing the blinds and no wireless data can escape.
This could be particularly useful in high-security environments like banks and financial institutions or government buildings. No doubt any wireless connectivity would be encrypted in such cases but Li-Fi adds that extra layer of security by the simple virtue that light can easily be contained.
REAL LIFE APPLICATION
Li-Fi is a proven technology that’s on the cusp of real-world application.
before Li-Fi becomes mainstream. It would speed things up if a company like Apple, for example, were to adopt Li-Fi for its Macs, iPads and iPhones. Then the rest of the industry would be pressured to do the same for their devices. But whatever the case, there’s no doubt that Li-Fi will become an integral part of our lives in the near future. It’s necessary if you want things like IoT and smart cities to become a reality.
Oon Yeoh is a consultant with experiences in print, online and mobile media. Reach him at oonyeoh@ gmail.com