Li-Fi has just been tested in the real world and it 100 times faster than Wi-Fi

Li-Fi has just been tested in the world... It's a wireless technology that transmits high-speed data
using visible light communication (VLC) - in the
coming months. With scientists achieving speeds of
224 gigabits per second

in the lab using Li-Fi earlier this year , the potential for this technology
to change everything about the way we use the Internet is huge.
LiFi is a wireless optical networking technology
that uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for data
transmission. LiFi is designed to use LED light
bulbs similar to those currently in use in many
energy-conscious homes and offices.And now, scientists have taken Li-Fi out of the lab for the first time, trialling it in offices and
industrial environments in Tallinn, Estonia,
reporting that they can achieve data transmission
at 1 GB per second - that's 100 times faster than
current average Wi-Fi speeds.
"We are doing a few pilot projects within different
industries where we can utilise the VLC (visible
light communication) technology," Deepak Solanki,
CEO of Estonian tech company, Velmenni, told IBTimes UK .
"Currently we have designed a smart lighting
solution for an industrial environment where the
data communication is done through light. We are
also doing a pilot project with a private client
where we are setting up a Li-Fi network to access
the Internet in their office space.”
Li-Fi was invented by Harald Haas from the
University of Edinburgh, Scotland back in 2011 ,
when he demonstrated for the first time that by
flickering the light from a single LED, he could
transmit far more data than a cellular tower.
Think back to that lab-based record of 224
gigabits per second - that's 18 movies of 1.5GB each being downloaded every single second.
The technology uses Visible Light Communication
(VLC), a medium that uses visible light between
400 and 800 terahertz (THz). It works basically
like an incredibly advanced form of Morse code -
just like switching a torch on and off according to
a certain pattern can relay a secret message,
flicking an LED on and off at extreme speeds can
be used to write and transmit things in binary
code.
And while you might be worried about how all that
flickering in an office environment would drive you
crazy, don’t worry - we’re talking LEDs that can
be switched on and off at speeds imperceptible to the naked eye.
The benefits of Li-Fi over Wi-Fi, other than
potentially much faster speeds, is that because
light cannot pass through walls, it makes it a
whole lot more secure, and as Anthony Cuthbertson
points out at IBTimes UK , this also means there's
less interference between devices.
While Cuthbertson says Li-Fi will probably not
completely replace Wi-Fi in the coming decades,
the two technologies could be used together to
achieve more efficient and secure networks.
Our homes, offices, and industry buildings have
already been fitted with infrastructure to provide
Wi-Fi, and ripping all of this out to replace it
with Li-Fi technology isn’t particularly feasible,
so the idea is to retrofit the devices we have right
now to work with Li-Fi technology.
Research teams around the world are working on
just that. Li-Fi experts reported for the The
Conversation last month that Haas and his team
have launched PureLiFi, a company that offers a
plug-and-play application for secure wireless
Internet access with a capacity of 11.5 MB per
second, which is comparable to first generation Wi-
Fi. And French tech company Oledcomm is in the
process of installing its own Li-Fi technology in
local hospitals.
If applications like these and the Velmenni trial in
Estonia prove successful, we could achieve the
dream outlined by Haas in his 2011 TED talk
below - everyone gaining access to the Internet via
LED light bulbs in their home.
"All we need to do is fit a small microchip to
every potential illumination device and this would
then combine two basic functionalities:
illumination and wireless data transmission," Haas
said . "In the future we will not only have 14
billion light bulbs, we may have 14 billion Li-Fis
deployed worldwide for a cleaner, greener, and
even brighter future." Expect to hear a whole lot more about Li-Fi