Li-Fi

pureLiFi, the home of LiFi, is recognised as the leader in the field – the use of the visible light spectrum instead of radio frequencies to enable wireless data communication. pureLiFi provides ubiquitous high-speed wireless access that offers substantially greater security, safety and data densities than Wi-Fi along with inherent properties that eliminate unwanted external network intrusion. In addition, the integration of illumination and data services generates a measurable reduction in both infrastructure complexity and energy consumption.


LiFi is a disruptive technology which will shift business models and create opportunities ripe for exploitation. The dominance and lifetime of LED lighting has created a need for new business models in the lighting industry. The need to offer services, including new payment and financing models, creates an unprecedented opportunity for LiFi.


Features

Li-Fi features include benefits to the capacity, energy efficiency, safety and security of a wireless system with a number of key benefits over Wi-Fi but is inherently a complementary technology.

Capacity
Bandwidth: The visible light spectrum is plentiful (10,000 more than RF spectrum), unlicensed and free to use.
Data density: Li-Fi can acheive about 1000 times the data density of Wi-Fi because visible light can be well contained in a tight illumination area whereas RF tends to spread out and cause interference.
High speed: Very high data rates can be achieved due to low interference, high device bandwidths and high intensity optical output.
Planning: Capacity planning is simple since there tends to be illumination infrastructure where people wish to communicate, and good signal strength can literally be seen.

Efficiency
Low cost: Requires fewer components than radio technology.
Energy: LED illumination is already efficient and the data transmission requires negligible additional power.
Environment: RF transmission and propagation in water is extremely difficult but Li-Fi works well in this environment.

Safety
Safe: Life on earth has evolved through exposure to visible light. There are no known safety or health concerns for this technology.
Non-hazardous: The transmission of light avoids the use of radio frequencies which can dangerously interfere with electronic circuitry in certain environments.

Security
Containment: It is difficult to eavesdrop on Li-Fi signals since the signal is confined to a closely defined illumination area and will not travel through walls.
Control: Data may be directed from one device to another and the user can see where the data is going; there is no need for additional security such as pairing for RF interconnections such as Bluetooth.


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. By flickering the light from a single LED, a change too quick for the human eye to detect, he can transmit far more data than a cellular tower — and do it in a way that's more efficient, secure and widespread.

Graphene Links Could Enable Super-Fast Internet

Researchers in Manchester and Cambridge show graphene’s potential for superfast broadband


Graphene, the magic material that has the science world buzzing, has been shown to be a potential accelerator for a future high-speed Internet.
The substance is strong, flexible and impermeable, but its greatest properties lie in it being the thinnest material known with stunning conductivity. It is this final attribute that has attracted attention to graphene as a potential successor to silicon in electronic devices, but new research has shown photonic properties that were not realised before.


Nanostructures Make Light Work


A team of researchers at the universities of Manchester and Cambridge have been looking at ways to improve the absorption of light by graphene. In its natural state, the material only absorbs three percent of light falling on it. Despite this, it has been shown acting in a 10Gbps optical communication link.
In a paper published in Nature Communications, the researchers show that, by combining graphene with plasmonic nanostructures, acting as minutely thin wires, the efficiency of graphene-based photodetectors can be increased by up to 20 times. In addition, the wavelength and polarisation of absorbed light can be altered by using nanostructures of different geometries.
“Such graphene devices can be incredibly fast, tens and potentially hundreds of times faster than communication rates in the fastest Internet cables. This is due to the unique nature of electrons in graphene, their high mobility and velocity,” the researchers claim.
Nobel Prize winners Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov are part of the team and were the discoverers of graphene in 2004. Since then, IBM has demonstrated how the material can be used for minute chips in wireless devices, the University of California has created a miniature, incredibly fast optical data transmitter using graphene as a modulator to switch a light source on and off, and Samsung has demonstrated a 25-inch touch screen coated in the material.
The story of graphene seems to extend monthly and Novoselov, who works with the Manchester University team, said, “The technology of graphene production matures day by day, which has an immediate impact both on the type of exciting physics which we find in this material, and on the feasibility and the range of possible applications.”


Source: e-Week Europe