And God said, let there be light

It is already a working technology. If commercialization efforts bear fruit, soon you could see your good old lighting device, LED—yes, light emitting diodes—carry your data at a fast, highly secure way. Yes, visible light is the next frontier in data com technology.

Commonly called Light Fidelty or LiFi by the developers, the technology is being positioned as a viable high speed data communication technology for shorter distances. Its backers even hope to replace WiFi with it. Analysts and researchers call it by a more generic name, VLC, standing for Visible Light Communications.

The working of the technology itself was first presented to public five years back (in July 2011) by German physicist Horlad Hass in a TED Talk, who positioned it as an optical version of mainstream WiFi.

Now there are a host of companies which are developing it into a viable wireless connection alternative. Foremost among them is Prof. Hass’ company, PureLifi, which has multiple products that can fit into the enterprise space. It is based in the UK. Then there is Silicon Vallley-based Axrtek, which is working on VLC for the last five years, but mostly focusing on IoT kind of applications for  smart cities, location based services, etc. FireFly Networks, which has investment from LightPointe is another such company.

Analysts are predicting significant growth potential. According to 6Wresearch, Global Li-Fi market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 115% during 2016-2022. It may be mentioned here that during 2011-15, Li-Fi market was commercialized only for the use in unidirectional data transfer. With advancement in cloud and mobile based applications, bidirectional data transferring entrepreneurial products are likely to hit the commercial market by 2020. PureLifi already has a bi-directional product.

Markets and markets research predict that Visible Light Communication (VLC) market will reach USD 6 billion by 2018. The US market, as per markets and markets research, accounted for the largest share of around 42% of the VLC market in 2015. The Asia-Pacific market for VLC is expected to grow at the highest CAGR of 105.8% between 2015 and 2020.

How it works

In LiFi technology, the common household LED (Light Emitting Diode) bulbs become the routers and the data is transmitted by the light emitted by them. It can enable the users to have high speed internet wherever they have visible light. The electricity connection that illuminates a warehouse can enable the mobile phones of the workers, items in the warehouse, scanners, printers and PC lying in the room and nearly every device to be visible and connected to a high speed internet connection, making the IoT based communications fast and easy.

The yet another advancement of wireless communications can allow fastest internet connections (at speed of light) with an already set-up infrastructure of well, just electricity. On household electricity, LED can enable data transfer at a speed of 224 gigabits per second, as per techworld, which is around a hundred times more than the normal WiFi. Any object or device that can be illuminated by the visible light can also be visible through the Internet; no matter whether these devices are under the sea or in the sky flying in an airplane.

A photo detector receives light. LED light bulbs being semi-conducting light source can dip and dim electricity at high speed without being visible to human eye. This dimming and dipping of LEDs are converted into signals by a signal processing element and the signals encoded in subtle changes of brightness are converted into binary stream. These binary steams are the videos, photos and everything we experience on web. Thanks to the literal flash speed LiFi technologies have, they can enable thousands of data streams in parallel.

Applications

Intelligent traffic management system, indoor communication, in-flight entertainment, underwater communications and location-based services are major VLC based applications to be commercialized within two years, as per Marketsandmarkets.

Being imposed on visible light, LiFi or VLC would provide a thousand times bigger spectrum and thus enable infrastructure to incorporate thousand times more internet providers. This would make the industry more competitive, providing a platform for newer internet providers and for users, a cheaper yet faster internet service.

It can also provide much better vehicular communication between tail lights of one car on a runway with head lights of another or the traffic lights managing or reporting traffic defaulters. Also, LiFi is being exploited to provide much better location based services.

Challenges

While the very nature of light—to be obstructed by opaque objects, such as walls—make LiFi inherently more secure, it also means limited applications. If the signal has to be taken over a long distance, it has to make use of more routers or LEDs. That may make it a bit complex and costlier, though cost would come down after LED becomes mainstream.

Zapatillas trekking