Sir Alexander Graham Bell may be
better known as the guy who invented the first ‘practical’ telephone, but the
Scottish scientist laid claim to an arsenal of additional innovations.
Among these were the photophone, a wireless telephone of sorts that
enabled sounds (including speech) to be transmitted via light. It’s said that
Bell actually valued the photophone more than the telephone from his lifetime
achievements, even though it never quite took off and is now consigned to the
footnotes of history.
However, more than 130 years after
the photophone first came to light, Professor Harald Haas is pioneering his own
light-centric wireless communications technology. And ironically, he’s doing so
from the Alexander Graham Bell building
at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
The
birth of Li-Fi
If you’re an avid follower of TED,
you may well have encountered Haas before. Way back in 2011, Haas took to the
stage to demonstrate his vision for the future of wireless communications,
using little more than LED bulbs. The talk also gave birth to the term ‘Li-Fi’,
which is now the commonly used nomenclature for bi-directional,
networked wireless communications using visible light, as opposed to
traditional radio frequencies.
If you have a spare 13 minutes,
Haas’s speech is worth a watch:
Light modulation certainly isn’t a
new concept, but Haas is looking to move things forward and enable connectivity
through simple LED bulbs. With Li-Fi, you can connect to the internet simply by
being within range of an LED beam, or you could conceivably transmit data using
your car headlights. The ramifications of this are huge, especially with the internet of things in full swing and the much
mooted spectrum crunch expected to
bite increasingly hard in the coming years.
Haas’s company’s mission statement
is:
“PureLiFi seeks to resolve the
global struggle for diminishing wireless capacity by developing and delivering
technology for secure, reliable, high speed communication networks that
seamlessly integrate data and lighting utility infrastructures and
significantly reduce energy consumption.”
The Next Web caught up with Haas in
his Edinburgh office to get the lowdown on where things are at, and where
things could be heading with Li-Fi in the not-too-distant future.
Illumination
to communication
Founded back in 2012, Haas’s PureLiFi
(previously PureVLC) is a spin-off from the University of Edinburgh, though
much of their visible light communication (VLC) research dates back to 2008
when its delightfully titled D-Light project kicked off.
Though the chunk of its efforts thus
far have been confined to the research and prototyping realm, there are real,
physical products out in the wild – it sold its first Li-Fi device to a US
healthcare provider last year. And earlier this year, PureLiFi launched its
first product proper – the Li-1st, which it touts as
the first publicly-available bi-directional visible light communication device.
Now, the Li-1st isn’t something you
can buy off-the-shelf at Amazon. But it’s “on the market” with some of its lead
partners, including companies from the security-focused fraternity. And this is
one of the key selling points of Li-Fi over Wi-Fi – it’s harder for third-party
prying eyes to infiltrate.
Li-Fi signals are confined to
narrowly-focused ‘beams’ that don’t travel through walls. Moreover, LED lights
are natural beam-formers, which makes it easier to create separate uplink and
downlink channels, which essentially means more secure internet browsing, given
that both channels have to be ‘intercepted’ if someone did manage
to coerce their way into the same room as you.
“This [Li-Fi] is a technology that can
aid cybersecurity in a very new way,” says Haas.
The Li-1st allows you to network via
a desktop photosensitive unit that works in tandem with an off-the-shelf,
unmodified light fixture. The desktop unit has infrared LEDs to communicate in
the uplink channel. We were given a demo by Haas in his light emporium at the
University of Edinburgh, and the YouTube video we watched streamed flawlessly.
The Li-1st delivers a capacity of
5Mbps in the uplink and downlink channels, covering a range of “up to” three
meters. And yes, you benefit from a nicely lit working space too. It’s worth
noting here that it has been shown that speeds of up to 10Gbps has been proven with Li-Fi
too.
While Li-Fi could become a more
common fixture in security-conscious locations in the future (e.g. banks or
government buildings), there are innumerable potential use-cases.
Content can be tailored to specific
locations through ‘fencing’, so that you know exactly what people and places
are receiving what kind of data – even within a single room. Someone could even
wander through various beams and receive information relevant to where they
currently stand.
So this is a potential scenario:
Lots of spotlights in a room, with people wandering along with their tablet,
passing through various beams, and the connection remaining constant
throughout. And it’s this exact thing that PureLiFi is working on next – the
Li-Flame will create the equivalent of a wireless network by turning LED bulbs
into wireless access points, effectively letting you move between light sources
without losing your connection.
The Li-Flame will also feature a
mobile unit that you can attach to your portable device, thus making it
compatible with LED connectivity.
Up
in the sky
Curiously, Haas tells us that
PureLiFi has been testing with a “major aircraft manufacturer,” which hints at
what could be to come for the future of air transport.
You know that reading light above
your head on a plane? That could easily be used to stream data to individuals
at their seats, directly to their iPads or laptops. But delivering
entertainment to your seat is only one reason why this could prove useful for
airlines and aircraft manufacturers.
“The airlines are more interested
because they save weight,” explains Haas. “These seats are usually hard-wired
with cables. And that also limits their flexibility. The airlines want to be
able to change the seat-spacing depending on what link they serve.”
So rather than having a rigid
seating structure, different planes on different routes at different times
could be reconfigured accordingly. Modularization is the name of the game here,
with no pesky cabling to interfere with the shifting of seats. And given that cables
often use a lot of copper, which is heavy, beaming data using the existing LED
light fixtures is one way of remedying this.
So..is
this actually ever going to replace Wi-Fi?
Okay okay, so is Li-Fi really a
Wi-Fi killer? Well, probably not in the foreseeable future – there are still
many inherent benefits to using Wi-Fi. But Haas was quick to dispel any
lingering myths that Li-Fi relies on ‘line-of-sight’ to connect: “Obviously, if
you block light entirely, then it won’t work. But it’s really hard to interrupt
a light beam. The light can bend very heavily.”
But the very fact that solid, opaque
objects can interfere with network connections will be an issue in many
contexts. It seems clear that if Li-Fi is to really take off via the mechanisms
envisaged by Haas, it will likely be in a complementary capacity – initially,
at least.
With that spectrum crunch looming, reselling old analogue TV spectrum
is proving to be one solution to increasing capacity. But that may not be
sufficient with the so-called internet of things bringing ubiquitous
connectivity to everything. Want to connect your kettle to the internet? Many
already have LED lights on them, so this could be an easy way of hooking it up
to the Web, and you could control it from your iPhone, be it to monitor power
consumption or whatever.
“It’s not surprising that Google bought Nest,” says
Haas. “Because if you can control your thermostat and link it to behavioral
patterns of movement in a room, then it gets smart. It doesn’t need to heat up
a room if nobody’s in it, so it can automatically turn off.”
Intelligent car-to-car
communications could be enabled via the vehicles’ LED headlights, with a view
towards preventing accidents. Heck, you could even tether an LED earring to
your body, and hook it up to sensors for tracking temperature, sugar levels and
other vital health data.
“Imagine you have an internet of
things, where people forecast that in 2020 there will be a thousand wireless
devices per person on the planet,” says Haas. “You’re using a limited spectrum,
all using the same frequencies. That’s a mass of interference created. And
people haven’t realized that. Light can circumvent that.”
Elsewhere, Li-Fi could help with
underwater networking, with divers and submersibles able to gain connectivity
via LED.
“Li-Fi is creating a new industry,”
says Haas. “It’s something we believe is big, and the reason for that is we see
a variety of different applications.”
But why LEDs specifically? Why not other
lights? Well, it all comes down to speed. Traditional incandescent light bulbs
are too slow. The best at the moment is LED, though this may change in the
future. All PureLiFi is doing is tapping a form of light transmission that is
already readily available and widely accessible, which makes their barriers to
entry far more surmountable. But there are still barriers.
“We use really thick, fat pipes for
data communications which are free – ‘light’, it’s free,” explains Haas.
“Whereas the RF (radio frequency) communications industry have licensed, and
often put in billions (of dollars) to cellular licenses. We have to overcome,
commercially, that reservation.”
This ‘reservation’, of course, stems
from an industry that may not be too quick to embrace something ‘new’
when it’s already heavily invested in the old world order.
“The reservation will be overcome,
in our view, by the need of people for more wireless connectivity and higher
data rates,” continues Haas. “It’s creating new business opportunities, and at
the moment this ecosystem of new business and business models is being
developed and we are helping and aiding this. That’s why we have the beta
programmes with our partners in order to develop new business models, new ways
of engaging with the markets.”
But how exactly does it all work,
and how does everything all connect? Can you just use existing light fittings
in your home? While it is possible to retrofit your existing set-up using powerline communications, the general idea moving
forward is that companies and manufacturers will start building their equipment
with Li-Fi firmly in mind.
Redwood Systems, acquired by CommScope last year,
is working on networked LED systems that not only transfers data over ethernet
cables, but power too. In the future, some light fixtures will only have one
connector, which works via technology known as power over ethernet. For example, while an
ethernet cable may provide 60 watt of power, a typical LED light fixture only
requires around 5 watt, so with one cable you could power 12 lights.
So in new electrical installations,
you could lay a CAT 5 cable to a light
fixture, rather than a power cable. The data exists immediately at the light
fixture.
In September last year, EDF and OLEDCOMM partnered with Thorn Lighting to
present prototypes of street-lights equipped with Li-Fi, during the Chalon
en Champagne trade fair. Li-Fi is a burgeoning industry for sure, but
developments are starting to ramp up somewhat.
Let
their be light
It’s estimated that the Li-Fi market
will be worth more than $6 billion by 2018, according to analysis by MarketsandMarkets.
Haas is well aware of the need for many more players in the space for it to be
viable, and he’s hoping Scotland will be central to this drive.
“Because of this massive opportunity and the myriad of different applications, one would easily see that it (the Li-Fi market) can’t be covered by one company,” says Haas. “A company needs to focus on a certain application, such as indoor networking. That’s why the university (Edinburgh) has realized that there is an opportunity for seeding a new industry. A new industry based here in Scotland, that will seed many more spin-out companies and an entire new market.”
For now, PureLiFi’s funding comes
mainly via research projects, but it’s looking to garner funds from the public
purse, as well as ‘strategic funding’ via a number of big players from across
the US and Asia. This is all about trying to “pull them into the center and
convince them of the opportunity they have in terms of early participation,”
says Haas.
Haas is pushing to raise a
signifcant sum of money to help build new premises for a Li-Fi center, while
creating new jobs and developing all the underlying technology and business
models for this fledgling industry. “The university has bought into that, the
principlal has bought into it, and at the moment we’re looking for stragetic
partners internationally,” says Haas.
It’s very much in PureLiFi’s
interests to encourage an ecosystem around this light-based technology, as it
will be relying on manufacturers and a myraid of third-parties to be on board
with this.
“What we’re envisaging now is
illumination, but it (light) will be a service in the future,” says Haas.
Incadescent bulbs have a lifespan of
around 2,000 hours, while LED have as much as 50,000 hours. “People who
manufacture them (LED bulbs) are aware that their lifecycles are much larger,
so they need to find new ways of adding service to the light they sell. That is
one of these additional services that would enable Phillips and others to
distinguish themselves from the competitors,” he continues.
For now, Li-Fi will remain a thing
of the future for most people
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