Be the first to know Li-Fi among your colleauges.

Li-Fi, just listening the name you may think I've gone mad so I'm trying to change name of Wi-Fi and describing it in funny way or I'm trying to make some new funny meaning of Wi-Fi as per my desire. If so then let me tell you that you are completely wrong. Li-Fi is not any extra and funny name given for Wi-Fi, but it is the new version of Wi-Fi which is more upgraded and is more economical. It is the technology which communicates via visible spectrum of light.

Li-Fi(Light Fidelity) is a new technology of wireless data communication using LED lighting. In general I call it fiber optics communication which communicates without fiber. Doesn't it sounds cool?? Let me explain you more in depth about it.

Li-Fi term was first used by Professor Harald Haas in his TED talk on the topic of Visible Light Communication. (Professor Haas is the professor of Mobile Communications, School of Engineering/Institute of Digital Communications, University of Edinburgh.) His research created the technology that can transfer vast quantities of information across a spectrum 10,000 times wider than the radio frequency spectrum. As it was revieled on August 2011, it has been the subject which everyone is curious about. The technology was demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show 2012 in Las Vegas using a pair of Casio smartphones to exchange data using light of varying intensity given off from their screens, detectable at a distance of up to ten metres. Till now Reserchers have got only speed of 500Mbytes per second but they believe that it is possible to achieve very high speed about 10 Gbps(theoritically) data transmission via Li-Fi. If it can transfer 10Gbps theoritically, then it may have practical speed of about 6 Gbps. If so then lets just imagine, how fast would our Internet perform?

How does it work then??

The heart of this technology is Light Emitting Diodes (LED). The transmission works on very general principle. if the LED is "ON", then the data signal is 1, else 0. Very fast switching of LEDs can produce an array of data using 1s and 0s. It is possible to encode data in the light by varying the rate at which the LEDs flicker on an off to give different strings of 1s and 0s. The modulation is so fast that the human eye doesn’t notice. In this way the transmission of data takes place in Li-Fi technology.

Advantages:

• It can solve the problems due to limitations of band-width.
• It can allow internet access to such places where traditional radio based wireless isn’t allowed such as aeroplane, military fields etc
• Visible light has 10,000 times the spectrum of radio frequencies allowing faster data with far higher volumes in a single data stream. 
• By fitting a regular LED bulb with a microchip, it can act as Li-Fi transmitter/receiver, so it can be used widely by general public.
• One last advantage mentioned by Prof. Haas was that data can be secured given the fact that light can be contained within opaque walls.

So, as a whole this technology seems to be very useful technology. Since it uses the visible light spectrum, it seems to be eco-friendly too. And the most important thing is, it may meet our desire of having high speed data transmissions. Personally, I think this technology can bring a new era in this world of internet. I wish all the best for Professor Haas and his team for further success of it.

I hope you all got some knowledge about this new technology. If you liked the blog, plz share it, else plz reply me. I'll try to remove the mistakes in my next blogs.

References:

http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/08/29/li-fi-internet-at-the-speed-of-light/

http://www.12-25life.com/blog/2011/08/05/li-fi/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Fi

http://www.google.com/