Light bulb moment: how LED could provide a faster, stronger, more secure mobile wireless connection
- Tests underway on Li-fi – ultra-high speed light fidelity technology
- Technology will complement Wi-fi, which faces competition for increasingly limited bandwidth on radio spectrum
Consumers have become so internet-dependent that it’s hard to imagine it won’t always be there.
However, the radio spectrum that covers 3G, 4G, 5G, Wi-fi, Bluetooth, digital radio and 4K television is finite.
Even the best connections struggle to cope with heavy demand and it’s only going to get worse as more people, devices and services connect and compete for the limited bandwidth.
Imagine a world where high-speed connectivity is as pervasive as the lights in our ceilings ... imagine billions of lights connecting billions of smart devices unlocking unprecedented productivity
Yet what if you could get a stronger, faster, more secure connection from an ordinary light-emitting diode light bulb?
That’s the potential of light fidelity, or Li-fi, a mobile wireless technology that uses light, rather than radio frequencies, to send data.
One of the companies developing the technology, pureLiFi, said: “Imagine a world where high-speed connectivity is as pervasive as the lights in our ceilings, our streets and our homes.
“Imagine billions of lights connecting billions of smart devices unlocking unprecedented productivity, autonomy and fuelling the next generation of high bandwidth disruptive applications, such as autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, edge computing and augmented reality.”
