Are you fed up of the slow internet speeds, paying for the costly WiFi plans and worrying about your WiFi being hacked by your neighbour? Well, experts have found a solution for your problem, The LiFi ! LiFi stands for Light Fidelity and uses light to send and receive data. The light we use to illuminate our houses, offices and streets can help us to connect to the internet.
The term was coined by the German Engineer, Harald Haas. It works on the principal of Visible Light Communication (VLC) which means it uses the visible light for communication instead of the radio waves. Researchers were able to achieve a speed of about 224Gbps during its testing and they claim it to be 100 times faster than the current WiFi technology.
How it works -
The A.C. current going to the LED is switched on and off at a very high rate (too quick to be noticed by the human eye) which generates a unique signal, this signal is then read by the transceiver, it then converts it into digital signal understood by the computer and sends it through a USB. You might be wondering that you will always have to keep the lights on for using LiFi, no the light of the LEDs can be dimmed below human's visibility and you can surf internet even when your room is dark. Also you don't need to necessarily stand below the LED to receive signal, light reflected off the walls are sufficient to do the needful.
Applications -
There is much more you can do with LiFi than just connecting to the internet. It can be used in Home Automation and IoT (Internet Of Things) devices. As light can travel through water LiFi can be used in underwater communication. Self Driving Vehicles can use it through street lights to communicate with other vehicles on the road to avoid accidents. It can also be used in electromagnetic sensetive areas such as aircraft cabin and nuclear power plants.
While its so many advantages, short range and high installation cost remains the area of improvement for the LiFi.
Image Source - Google Images.
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