Li-Fi: the connection of the future arrives from the light

The technology and the innovation never stop to present us new incredible inventions. Every time we think that it can’t amazed us more than the previous revelation and every time, instead, it goes on to astonish us and to leave us without words. We think that it’s been already inveted everything and that nothing will amaze us anymore. But every time we remain enchanted by something new and amazing. One of the last, even if unknown, innovation, is the Li-Fi, the connection that arrives from the light.

From the Wi-Fi to the Li-Fi

Now all of us know the Wi-Fi and, more or less, its functioning. There are many devices that transmit datas through the radio waves, without wires. But the wireless connection can have unaspected and amazing aspects.

Did you think that the radio waves were the only solution for the wireless datas transimission, but what if they can travel in the space even in other ways, for example through the light?

The Li-Fi, acronym of Light Fidelity, is right this, a new technology which is able to transmit datas through the light and that wants to compete with the Wi-Fi.

However this amazing invention which seems to come from the future is in reality a kind of technology which can almost be called obsolete.

Yes, because in reality the Li-Fi is inside our homes already for many years. Even if the word Li-Fi has been made only in the 2011, it’s nothing more than the evolution of the old infrared rays, which are really used still today, for example, to let the television communicate with the remote.

How does the Li-Fi work

How did they think, so, to pass from the infrared ray to the Li-Fi? Harald Haas, from the Edimburg University started to talk about the Li-Fi in the 2011, and he, basically, thought to can connect a computer to the web through a LED light. The crazy idea, anyway, was than achieved and experimented by the Fudan University in Shangai. After that many start ups and brands started to look in another light the Li-Fi and they believed it was possible to develop.

Let’s arrive, so, to its real functioning. As well as it was for the Wi-Fi, the Li-Fi will need an appropriate infrastructure, a modem. This will receive and decode the signs transmitted from a LED, by transfering the light impulses in electric ones, which will be readed by any computer or device.

A device for the lighting, which can be a LED bulb, is equipped with a modem that regolarize the ligh, exactly as it works for the radio signs. In this way a simple light can be a router for the Li-Fi.

After that, a Li-Fi detector inserted in a computer or in every device, catches and decodes those lighting signs.

So, a simple LED light is able to transmit a huge quantity of datas better than a normal Wi-Fi.

Advantages and disadvantages of the Li-Fi

We can list many advantages of this new and innovative way of data transmission:

• The light spectrum is 10.000 times larger and 100 times faster than the Wi-Fi;
• A LED light is all we need;
• The Li-Fi doesn’t make electromagnetic fields;
• The costs are almost nothing, it’s enough to use the current electric webs and the LED lights;
• The connection is much more safe and it can’t be hacked if not inside the room where the router is.

But so why the Li-Fi is still unknown and basically unused?

• The datas transmission is directional and everyobstacle (a wall, an airmchair) stops it;
• The connection happens only if the LED is switched on;
• An usage outside the walls of a building, an home or an office, is not efficient, because the weather and the smog can interfere with it.

The future usagesi

Even though the problems just listed many believe that the future of the connection is the Li-Fi. The problems can be fighted and solved. By the way it’s unlikely a quick dispossession of the Wi-Fi. It’s, inestad, much many probable that the Li-Fi is going slowly through it Especially for a reason, the total absence of electromagnetic fields and its full green identity, even though the speed and low costs.

Who bets on it doesn’t have any doubt, by using those points in a couple of decades we will fully  forget the Wi-Fi.

This post is also available in: Italiano