Well friends, today we have a great technology to talk about. A research from the University of St. Andrews has demonstrated a natural white LED that can encode data using visible light and transmit them at speeds that dwarf the WiFi networks available today. This new discovery could ultimately result in a faster alternative to Wi-Fi.
A team of researchers has discovered a way to use visible light known as “Li-Fi.†It works by encoding data in nanosecond pulses of visible light that is shorter than anything the human eye can see. The visible spectrum is 10,000 times larger than the spectrum used for Wi-Fi. Researchers have been able to demonstrate transmission rates up to 4Gbps, making Li-Fi a good alternative to the existing system. Researchers expect to hit 15Gbps later this year, which will be faster than any other speeds thought of for the wireless arena. For Li-Fi to reach mainstream adoption though, more work must be done so that it works in standard lighting conditions. The St. Andrews team found an organic polymer (BBEHP-PPV) that can be used to catch some of the light from an indium-gallium nitride LED and reemit it as green, while another PPV derivative (MEH-PPV) can catch appetite from a BBEHP-PPV and re-emit it as orange-red light.
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The team has characterised the final outcome as a “higher peculiarity white light than prior efforts during intelligent lighting†and has claimed it to be “in a right ballpark.†The judgment device achieved delivery rates of 350Mbit over 5cm — 35x faster than fake phosphors in a homogeneous test. Here visible light could be used to literally bathe certain areas in spectrum coverage where existing networks choke and die under load and the attenuation from Li-Fi is no worse than what we have already seen with current high-frequency Wi-Fi standards.
