Thursday, December 3, 2015
What is Li-Fi ?
LiFi is a wireless optical networking technology that uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for data transmission. LiFi is designed to use LED light bulbs similar to those currently in use in many energy-conscious homes and offices. Expect to hear a whole lot more about Li-Fi - a wireless technology that transmits high-speed data using visible light communication (VLC) - in the coming months. With scientists achieving speeds of 224 gigabits per second in the lab using Li-Fi earlier this year, the potential for this technology to change everything about the way we use the Internet is huge.
Li-Fi was invented by Harald Haas from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland back in 2011, when he demonstrated for the first time that by flickering the light from a single LED, he could transmit far more data than a cellular tower. Think back to that lab-based record of 224 gigabits per second - that's 18 movies of 1.5 GB each being downloaded every single second.
HARALD HAAS said “ Li-Fi works in similar way to Wi-Fi except it doesn't use radio for data communication. It uses LED lights. LED lights are little electronic devices, a little bit like transistors. And it allows us to change the intensity, the brightness of the light, and these changes encode binary information - ones and zero - in a very, very fast, fast manner”.
Benefits of LiFi:
- Higher speeds than Wi-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.
Li-Fi could also serve as just another connection point. Today, smartphones skip from cellular to Wi-Fi, depending on which connection is best, but in the future, Li-Fi could be part of that mix, too.
~Source: Internet
