Gauge Newsletter September 2016 | Page 26

LI-FI

A BINARY DREAM COMES TRUE

Li-Fi was introduced to the world by Professor Harald Hass at a 2011 TED talk .

There are two kinds of light , the glow that illuminates and the glow that obscures ”, so said James Thurber , a famous American author . And now , there seems three kinds of light . The third comes as the glow that sends data . That sentence doesn ’ t seem to make any sense until you come to know about Li-Fi , a revolutionary technology that delivers a high speed bi-directional networked communication in a flicker of a light .

Li-Fi is the short name used for light-fidelity , a new form of wireless communication technology that uses light signals to communicate data . Instead of the radio spectrum , Li-Fi uses infrared and ultra-violet spectrums that can carry more information when compared with radio frequency waves . If the question “ how ?” pops into your mind right now , “ visible light communication ( VLC )” is simply the answer .
The LED lights used in your flashlight can be turned into a wireless router using visible light communication . It makes the LED flicker by switching it on and off at a high speed . If you are
Source : http :// cdn3 . techworld . com
Source : http :// icdn3 . digitaltrends . com
imagining a whole mess of LEDs that are flickering and making your eyes pain , that ’ s not the correct image about VLC . The speed is almost invisible to the naked eye which means LEDs are blinked at a very high rate which will not impact living beings . The process is almost like a Morse code which comprises a flow of binary data .
Li-Fi was introduced to the world by Professor Harald Hass at a 2011 TED talk . Although he started researching this technology back in 2003 . It was in 2012 , he was able to introduce the technology at a commercial level . PureLiFi was founded in 2012 by Professor Harald with the goal of commercializing Li-Fi technology all over the world . Professor Harald predicted that the extensive demand for radio spectrum can be a real threat for communication in the future . The invention of Li-Fi is not a walk in a park . According to NASA , the first of
26 Gauge Newsletter University of Peradeniya