Li-Fi: like Wi-Fi, but 100-times faster
Every now and then, a revolutionary technological advance comes along and changes how we live our daily lives.
Li-Fi might just be the next one.
It is like Wi-Fi, but much, MUCH, faster.
Having just been trialled for the first time in real life, Li-Fi was found to live up to scientists’ claims that it operates 100-times faster than Wi-Fi technologies.
And if you picture such genius inventions to have been born of a ‘light-bulb moment’, well this one most certainly was.
Li-Fi is a wireless technology that transmits high-speed data using visible light communication (VLC).
It means, within the next five years, you could be accessing the Internet using the light-bulbs in your home.
This would reportedly be safer as well, protecting the data being sent, because light cannot pass through walls.
The technology was brought from research labs, where scientists achieved speeds of 224 gigabits per second, to real life by an Estonian start-up company, Velmenni.
"Currently we have designed a smart lighting solution for an industrial environment where the data communication is done through light,” Deepank Solanki, CEO of Velmenni, told IBTimes UK.
In another project, the company has set up a Li-Fi network in an office space to provide Internet access for a private client.
The man who invented Li-Fi, Professor Harald Haas from the University of Edinburgh, said that current infrastructure is suitable for integration of Li-Fi.
In a Ted talk broadcast in 2011 he demonstrated how, by flickering the light from a single LED, he could transmit far more data than a cellular tower.
"All we need to do is fit a small microchip to every potential illumination device," Haas said.
If it does all turn out to be that easy, you could be downloading that favourite movie of yours in a flash - a flash of light.
