Close Menu
  • Homepage
  • News
  • Cloud & AI
  • ECommerce
  • Entertainment
  • Finance
  • Opinion
  • Podcast
  • Contact

Subscribe to Updates

Get the latest technology news from TechFinancials News about FinTech, Tech, Business, Telecoms and Connected Life.

What's Hot

Rise In E-Commerce Activity Boosts SA’s Supply Chain Sector

2025-07-16

iPhone 17 Pro May Return To Aluminum Alloy Body

2025-07-16

LEPAS Debuts In South Africa 2026 To Redefine Premium SUVs

2025-07-16
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Trending
  • Rise In E-Commerce Activity Boosts SA’s Supply Chain Sector
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube LinkedIn WhatsApp RSS
TechFinancials
  • Homepage
  • News
  • Cloud & AI
  • ECommerce
  • Entertainment
  • Finance
  • Opinion
  • Podcast
  • Contact
TechFinancials
Home»Breaking News»Imagine: Your lightbulb turn into Wi-Fi
Breaking News

Imagine: Your lightbulb turn into Wi-Fi

Gugu LourieBy Gugu Lourie2015-09-29No Comments5 Mins Read
Share Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email Copy Link

 

 

The tungsten lightbulb has served well over the century or so since it was introduced, but its days are numbered now with the arrival of LED lighting, which consume a tenth of the power of incandescent bulbs and have a lifespan 30 times longer. Potential uses of LEDs are not limited to illumination: smart lighting products are emerging that can offer various additional features, including linking your laptop or smartphone to the internet. Move over Wi-Fi, Li-Fi is here. By Pavlos Manousiadis, Graham Turnbull  and Ifor Samuel 


Wireless communication with visible light is, in fact, not a new idea. Everyone knows about using smoke signals on a desert island to try to capture attention. Perhaps less well known is that in the time of Napoleon much of Europe was covered with optical telegraphs, otherwise known as the semaphore.

The photophone, with speech carried over reflected light. Amédée Guillemin
Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, actually regarded the photophone as his most important invention, a device that used a mirror to relay the vibrations caused by speech over a beam of light.

In the same way that interrupting (modulating) a plume of smoke can break it into parts that form an SOS message in Morse code, so visible light communications – Li-Fi – rapidly modulates the intensity of a light to encode data as binary zeros and ones. But this doesn’t mean that Li-Fi transceivers will flicker; the modulation will be too fast for the eye to see.

Wi-Fi vs Li-Fi

The enormous and growing user demand for wireless data is placing huge pressure on existing Wi-Fi technology, which uses the radio and microwave frequency spectrum. With exponential growth of mobile devices, by 2019 more than ten billion devices are expected to exchange around 35 quintillion (1018) bytes of information each month. This won’t be possible using existing wireless technology due to frequency congestion and electromagnetic interference. The problem is most acutely felt in public spaces in urban areas, where many users try to share the limited capacity available from Wi-Fi transmitters or mobile phone network cell towers.

A fundamental communications principle is that the maximum data transfer possible scales with the electromagnetic frequency bandwidth available. The radio frequency spectrum is heavily used and regulated, and there just isn’t enough additional space to satisfy the growth in demand. So Li-Fi has the potential to replace radio and microwave frequency Wi-Fi.

Light frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum are underused, while to either side is congested. Philip Ronan, CC BY-SA

Visible light spectrum has huge, unused and unregulated capacity for communications. The light from LEDs can be modulated very quickly: data rates as high as 3.5Gb/s using a single blue LED or 1.7Gb/s with white light have been demonstrated by researchers in our EPSRC-funded Ultra-Parallel Visible Light Communications programme.

Unlike Wi-Fi transmitters, optical communications are well-confined inside the walls of a room. This confinement might seem to be a limitation for Li-Fi, but it offers the key advantage that it is very secure: if the curtains are drawn then nobody outside the room can eavesdrop. An array of light sources in the ceiling could send different signals to different users. The transmitter power can be localised, more efficiently used and won’t interfere with adjacent Li-Fi sources. Indeed the lack of radio frequency interference is another advantage over Wi-Fi. Visible light communications is intrinsically safe, and could end the need for travellers to switch devices to flight mode.

A further advantage of Li-Fi is that it can use existing power lines as LED lighting so no new infrastructure is needed.

How a Li-Fi network would work. Boston University

Lightening the burden of the internet of things

The internet of things is an ambitious vision of a hyper-connected world of objects autonomously communicating with each other. For example, your fridge might inform your smartphone that you have run out of milk, and even order it for you. Sensors in your car will directly alert you though your smartphone that your tyres are too worn or have low pressure.

Given the number of “things” that can be fitted with sensors and controllers then network-enabled and connected, the bandwidth needed for all these devices to communicate is vast. Industry monitor Gartner predicts that 25 billion such devices will be connected by 2020, but given that most of this information needs only to be transferred a short distance, Li-Fi is an attractive – and perhaps the only – solution to making this a reality.

Several companies are already offering products for visible light communications. The Li-1st from PureLiFi, based in Edinburgh, offers a simple plug-and-play solution for secure wireless point-to-point internet access with a capacity of 11.5 Mbps – comparable to first generation Wi-Fi. Another is Oledcomm from France, which exploits the safe, non-radio frequency nature of Li-Fi with installations in hospitals.

There are still many technological challenges to tackle but already the first steps have been taken to make Li-Fi a reality. In the future your light switch will turn on much more than just illumination.

  • Pavlos Manousiadis is a Research Fellow, University of St Andrews
  • Graham Turnbull is a Professor, Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews
  • Ifor Samuel is aProfessor of Polymer Optoelectronics, University of St Andrews
  • This article was originally published on The Conversation
  • Main image source: mightyohm, CC BY-SA
  • Email TechFinancials.co.za at [email protected]

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Gugu Lourie
Gugu Lourie

Related Posts

Rise In E-Commerce Activity Boosts SA’s Supply Chain Sector

2025-07-16

LEPAS Debuts In South Africa 2026 To Redefine Premium SUVs

2025-07-16

How Agri-Tech Is Powering South Africa’s Cannabis Boom

2025-07-15

Ithuba Challenges Lottery Licence Award

2025-07-14

Vodacom Deploys Mobile Private Network At Sasol Secunda Fuel Facility

2025-07-04

SAPS Launches Long Awaited e-Recruitment Drive

2025-07-01

South Africans Spent R20M Via Luno Pay Since Nov 2024 Launch

2025-06-24

Judge Slams RAF For Wasting Millions In Chaotic Court Cases

2025-06-10

Batohi Retracts NPA ‘Infiltration’ Claims After Minister Meeting

2025-06-08

No Comments

  1. important link on 2016-04-08 05:53

    I simply want to tell you that I am beginner to blogging and seriously loved this page. Probably I’m likely to bookmark your site . You absolutely come with wonderful well written articles. Regards for sharing with us your blog site.

    Reply
Leave A Reply Cancel Reply

DON'T MISS
Breaking News

Rise In E-Commerce Activity Boosts SA’s Supply Chain Sector

Despite facing ongoing challenges, South Africa’s supply chain sector is experiencing growth fuelled by a…

LEPAS Debuts In South Africa 2026 To Redefine Premium SUVs

2025-07-16

How Agri-Tech Is Powering South Africa’s Cannabis Boom

2025-07-15

Ithuba Challenges Lottery Licence Award

2025-07-14
Stay In Touch
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
OUR PICKS

Fuse Lit: SA’s U.S. Tech Bomb ‘Nears Detonation’

2025-07-16

US Denies Mcebisi Jonas’ Visa, Rejects Credentials As Ramaphosa’s Envoy

2025-07-15

Takealot Expands Pickup Points At Pick n Pay For Shopper Convenience

2025-07-14

DA Urges President: Fire Minister Nkabane Now – Open Letter

2025-06-25

Subscribe to Updates

Get the latest tech news from TechFinancials about telecoms, fintech and connected life.

About Us

TechFinancials delivers in-depth analysis of tech, digital revolution, fintech, e-commerce, digital banking and breaking tech news.

Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit RSS
Our Picks

Rise In E-Commerce Activity Boosts SA’s Supply Chain Sector

2025-07-16

iPhone 17 Pro May Return To Aluminum Alloy Body

2025-07-16

LEPAS Debuts In South Africa 2026 To Redefine Premium SUVs

2025-07-16
Recent Posts
  • Rise In E-Commerce Activity Boosts SA’s Supply Chain Sector
  • iPhone 17 Pro May Return To Aluminum Alloy Body
  • LEPAS Debuts In South Africa 2026 To Redefine Premium SUVs
  • Fuse Lit: SA’s U.S. Tech Bomb ‘Nears Detonation’
  • Gwede Mantashe Named Acting Minister Of Police
TechFinancials
RSS Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn YouTube WhatsApp
  • Homepage
  • Newsletter
  • Contact
  • Advertise
  • Privacy Policy
  • About
© 2025 TechFinancials. Designed by TFS Media.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

Ad Blocker Enabled!
Ad Blocker Enabled!
Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors. Please support us by disabling your Ad Blocker.