Happy with 4G or your current wi-fi system? Then hold your breath, my friends. After some days, your Internet will be super-fast, yes! Faster than it is now. Don’t believe me?
I am going to tell you about an upcoming technology which is known to very few of us. The ‘Li-Fi’- ‘Light Fidelity’ aka Optical wi-fi is what will end up to be phenomenal. This is for the people who love speed and want it to be faster and faster each day.
With an estimated compound growth rate of 82% by 2018, it has gathered all the technologists’ attention. It will be worth over $6 billion per year by 2018. Can you imagine several small LEDs having so much information to transmit to you? Amazing.
Professor Harald Hass of the University of Edinburgh (2010) gave the Li-Fi prototype’s first-ever demonstration at the TED Global Conference in Edinburgh. The technology aims to create a new communication channel with the use of existing equipment.
This is a 5G communication and uses light from light-emitting diodes, i.e., LEDs, as a medium. It is speedy, cheap, and wireless. Its working is similar to wi-fi and Optical Fiber.
In Li-Fi, the LEDs work as an access point. The VLC signals work by switching on and off in nanoseconds and cannot be interpreted by the human eye. A photodetector is placed at the end of LEDs which receives, amplifies, and processes the data. It uses 802.11 protocols that are similar to wi-fi.
Advantages
1. Its range is concise and can’t penetrate the walls, making it very secure from hackers.
2. As salt conducts electricity, it is usable underwater without radio interference.
3. It can be used in planes because it does not interfere with the radio waves.
4. It uses visible light from the Electromagnetic Spectrum.
The Li-Fi system will bring 100 Gbps speed to your PC. Though the Ph.D. students of Oxford University say that such a type of indoor wireless facility cannot replace wi-fi, the data rates of 3 terabits per second are very promising. In contrast, wi-fi has a speed of only 7 Gbps.
it might be the next most promising technology. The technologists are working on it and carrying out various demonstrations. Through this, the way to access the Internet will change completely.
Whether it will be able to survive or not is an important question yet to be answered!
-Anubha Manjeshwar
Last Updated on by Sanjana