Connectivity Technology Blog

I have been writing about LiFi and other light based communications for a while but it looks like these are finally being standardised and have a potential to be used in commercial devices for communications. The first thing to mention here is that like there are different brand names for Wi-Fi (like Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 6, etc.), we probably need different names for LiFi. In fact I am not even sure if we write LiFi as one word or Li-Fi. LiFi Tech News describes the technologies as follows: ITU-T G.9991 standard is the 1st LiFi standard specifying the system architecture, physical (PHY) layer and data link layer (DLL) for high-speed indoor LiFi transceivers, the LiFi access points within LED and infrared lamps. There are also at least 3 IEEE standards that are being developed to bring LiFi to the mass market. These are the IEEE 802.11bb, IEEE 802.15.7 and IEEE 802.15.13. IEEE 802.11bb defines one medium access control (MAC) and several physical layer (PHY) specifications for wireless conn...

When we first talked about Starlink back in 2019 , we saw in the video that the concept involved laser communication to communicate between the satellites. While the initially launched satellites did not have the laser communication mechanism built in, it looks like they are being added to the newer ones.  A report from Fast Company in late 2021 said: One of the next big upgrades in telecom will involve satellites firing lasers at each other—to beam data, not blow stuff up. The upside of replacing traditional radio-frequency communication with lasers, that encode data as pulses of light, can be much like that of deploying fiber-optic cable for terrestrial broadband: much faster speeds and much lower latency. “Laser links in orbit can reduce long-distance latency by as much as 50%, due to higher speed of light in vacuum & shorter path than undersea fiber,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted in July about the upgrade now beginning for that firm’s Starlink satellite constellation. ...

Interest in zero-energy/low-energy IoT is gaining ground as the industry tries to introduce more of these with minimal impact to the environment. A research team of IMDEA Networks Institute has introduced Internet of Things (IoT) devices that communicate without any batteries and harvest energy and receive data through visible light. A news article reported: This represents a new step towards making battery-free devices a reality, through the convergence of two emerging technologies: LiFi and radio frequency (RF) backscatter. Potential applications include smart homes, smart cities, and smart agriculture. It is expected that more than 64 billion IoT devices will be deployed by 2025, and they will work with batteries. The chemical components of these batteries threaten to have a huge environmental impact on the Earth. There is a pressing need to find a solution for removing the batteries without affecting communication performance and IoT services. IMDEA researchers propose that IoT de...

I remember first talking about LiFi back in 2011 , but since then things have come a long way. We discussed it being adopted by IEEE in a post couple of years back . IEEE 802.11 Light Communication (LC) TG which is working on 802.11 bb , is also called the Task Group "bb" (TGbb) and is focused on introducing necessary changes to the base IEEE 802.11 Stds to enable communications in the light medium. Lightbulbs are delivering ultra-high speed #broadband ! @ITU #LiFi standard is the first to enable high-speed indoor Visible Light Communication https://t.co/vWKSYrkTBP pic.twitter.com/YHPW7O7mm3 — ITU (@ITU) September 4, 2020 In another post last year, we discussed that even though a lot of terms like LiFi, VLC, etc., are used interchangeably, they all have subtle differences. Vodafone Deutschland and Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) announced that they are joining forces to interlink the two communication technologies 5G and LiFi, providing their customers wi...

Last year I wrote about LiFi , how it can play a role in densification and beyond-5G. LiFi (sometimes written as Li-Fi but I believe LiFi is the correct way to write it) has been in news recently because of world's first backhaul trial with an ordinary solar cell as data receiver in Orkney. Immensely proud of the @LRDC @kikepoves team for the successful launch of the world's first #LiFi backhaul trial with an ordinary solar cell as data receiver. Thanks to @DCMS @5GRuralFirst #5G project. This means people on Graemsay (Orkney) can now watch 4k TV! pic.twitter.com/SkQw8gEn1M — Harald Haas (@dlarah15) July 4, 2019 Land Mobile has a good write up on this here . There is also misunderstanding sometime about different types of light communications being referred to as LiFi. The picture above shows difference between OCC (Optical Camera Communications), VLC (Visible Light Communications), LiFi & FSO (Free Space Optics). Rather than talk too much about the tec...