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A British physicist has developed a technology that could one day deliver your wireless broadband connection over any ordinary household lamp equipped with a “light emitting diode” (LED) light bulb.
Professor Harald Haas from Edinburgh University in the United Kingdom says he has developed a super-efficient, super-fast wireless broadband transmission system that uses light instead of radio waves.
Dubbed Light Fidelity, D-Light, or “Li-Fi” for short, Haas demonstrated his invention using an ordinary table lamp that successfully transmitted data at speeds exceeding 10Mbps using light waves from LED light bulbs to a computer located below the lamp.
To prove that the light bulb was the source of the data stream, he periodically blocked the beam of light, causing the connection to drop.
Haas says using light waves for data transmissions could revolutionize wireless communications and end the spectrum shortage plaguing today’s wireless industry.
“The way we transmit wireless data is inefficient electromagnetic waves, in particular radio waves which are limited, they are sparse, they are expensive and only have a certain range,” Professor Haas said. “It is this limitation which does not cope with wireless data, and we are running out of efficiency.”
Haas notes 95 percent of the energy used to transmit electromagnetic waves is wasted through heat dissipation.
Haas added that during today’s spectrum crunch, opening up light waves for wireless telecommunications would increase the amount of available spectrum by at least 10,000 percent, potentially transforming how we think about wireless communications technology.
“Light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Wouldn’t it be great to use it for wireless communications?”
Haas believes as we begin to replace energy inefficient traditional light bulbs for LED bulbs, which are becoming increasingly affordable, using them to piggyback data transmissions of all kinds could make staying “in range” of a wireless signal as simple as flicking on a light switch.
“For me the applications of it are beyond imagination,” Haas said. “All we need to do is to fit a small microchip to every potential illumination device and this would combine illumination and data transmission, and this could solve the problems facing us in wireless communication.”
[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Harald Haas Demos Light-Fi.mp4[/flv]
What if every light bulb in the world could also transmit data? At TEDGlobal, Harald Haas demonstrates, for the first time, a device that could do exactly that. (13 minutes)
That’s incredible. It sounds like it works much like fiber optics, just without the cabling. The applications really are enormous. The one I find the most interesting is the airplane. Getting internet to an airplane right now is difficult. The equipment is bulky and consumes a lot of energy. The obvious downside, though, is that it has to have light. So…my first thought was cell phones, as he mentioned. Holding it in your hand, you could get a lot of data. But, what happens when you go outside in the daytime? Or when your phone is in your pocket? I… Read more »
Versions of this had been tested for use in offices, such as a large cubicle area where the overhead lighting could be setup to transmit data, I believe I first heard of successful tests doing this a year or two ago. I just don’t see it being practical given the requirement for overhead transmission and some sort of reciever, plus the issues of devices still needing wireless in other environments like outdoors or perhaps even large warehouses. There aren’t that many critical devices running off wireless in office environments either, usually the only ones you see now days are iPhones,… Read more »
I am certainly curious about the concept and technology here. I have yet to obviously see it in action, but like pointed out above, it’s basically Wireless Fiber. It does remind me of the days of using laptops with Infrared ports to wirelessly print to Printers, or sending data to laptops using Infrared ports. I’d certainly check it out once I see the technology floating around somewhere.