Time to move from Wi-Fi to Li-Fi

By: Raktim Debnath

A few weeks ago we talked about the ‘Internet of Things.’ This time we are going to tell you about Li-Fi which will play a very essential role in turning ‘Internet of Things’ into reality.

Li-Fi (Light Fidelity) is wireless communication technology fairly similar to Wi-Fi. This term was first introduced by Harald Haas, a professor of University of Edinburgh. Li-Fi uses visible light waves that we get from our everyday LED bulbs instead of radio waves which is used by Wi-Fi.

The best thing about Li-Fi is that it can deliver internet access more than 100 times faster than the traditional Wi-Fi that we used these days. Its speed can reach up to 1Gbps (gigabit per second).

The reason that it can achieve such enormous speed is because it utilizes light. Light can transfer data at a much faster rate and also in a concentrated area. The data is transferred through very subtle and quick change in frequency of the light which is undetectable to human eye.

So all you need to set up is a Li-Fi is a standard LED bulb, an internet connection and a special receiver.

Another advantage of it is that it will provide a higher degree of privacy as visible light cannot penetrate walls. So it will be almost impossible for anyone from outside of the room to access your internet unless he/she is in direct contact with the light.

Li-Fi also uses inexpensive LED bulbs so it will also be very easy to turn the Wi-Fi hotspots into Li-Fi hotspots and it will also consume less energy than Wi-Fi making it much more energy-efficient system.

Very recently this internet access system was commercially tested in the Estonian capital Tallinn with great success. They were able to achieve speed of 1 Gbps which is still 100 times faster than the 100 Mbps superfast internet of South Korea.

Tests in Oxford University has shown the potential speed of Li-Fi to be up to 224Gbps. This means you can download 18 movies of 1.5 GB in just 1 second!

Now this means we will soon experience cheap, sustainable and superfast internet which will easily make the ‘Internet of Things’ a reality by connecting out everyday objects with each other through data transfer.