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Wireless Internet Access Uses Visible Light, Not Radio Waves
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that a company has demonstrated a new form of wireless communication that uses light instead of radio waves. "Its inventor, St. Cloud resident John Pederson, says visible-light embedded wireless data communication is the next step in the evolution of wireless communications, one that will expand the possibilities in phone and computer use. The connection provides Web access with almost no wiring, better security and with speeds more than eight times faster than cable."
im in ur bawx stealin ur photons
Radio waves are part of the light spectrum?
... are light, you insensitive clod!
I sense much beer in you. Beer leads to intoxication, intoxication leads to hangover. Hangover leads to sobering.
Looking at the access point can cause severe retinal burns. We are not responsible for retinal damage or permanent blindness as a result of using our product. Thank you, and have a nice day.
WARNING!
Do not look at the internet with your remaining eye.
liqbase
Radio is just another color of light--a very, uh, extremely red color.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
It's called free space optics. The technology has been around a long time, in fact, and for a while it was fairly common on laptops. It was called IrDA, and though it was fairly short range you could use it to transfer files, establish a TCP/IP connection, etc.
I remember playing a Starcraft game with an iMac G3 and PowerBook G3. A friend and I used AppleTalk over IrDA. Unfortunately it was rather awkward since they had to line up, but we figured out you could bounce the infrared beam with mirrors. So we didn't need ethernet, we could play wirelessly...this was in 1998, long before 802.11b became mass-market.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
For how many decades does my university use laser links to our dorms? For how many decades do we have infra red data transmission, e.g. in remote controls?
Last time I checked light doesn't travel through my wall. Radio waves do.
Has this guy never seen snow? Or fog? Or rain? Does he live in a desert? Two words: Atmospheric absorption.
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Tinfoil glasses :)
- The Sigless Wonder
From TFA:
So the cell phones equipped with that would NOT operate with any cell tower that was out of visual range. Doesn't that kind of limit your conversations with your bank to, essentially, being inside the bank building?
No. Because the fiber cable can be punched through walls and such. It does not require line of sight to work. But it works at the speed of light. Which is why it is preferred.
If it works out as Pederson plans, his project would replace the need for fiber optic wires that run underground and in buildings. The cost savings alone in construction and wiring make it impressive, St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis said.
âoeRight now, we are going through a tremendous amount of fiber optics. If this can move and transmit with light rather than cable, there is significant savings in that alone,â Kleis said.
Now, given that they're essentially the same technology, I can't see how this would be faster than fiber. But if by "cable" when talking about speeds, he does mean DOCSIS, then that's easy. 10 Gigabit ethernet is already more than 20 times faster than EuroDOCSIS 3.0, 8-channel, and most varieties of 10GbE run over fiber.
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There's a reason we don't already use visible light signals to send wireless data (except if we're lost in the wilderness, I guess). It's VISIBLE. Can you image how annoying it would be to have light flickering around you all the time from your communicating devices? One of the primary advantages of the various bands we use (radio, infrared, etc.) is that they don't interfere with our normal operations: they're invisible.
We've got plenty of bandwidth that doesn't interact directly with the human body. Why don't we stick to that instead of trying to use something that does?
ceci n'est pas une
It's been investigated but the technology just won't work out. Light sensors have a strong speed/intensity tradeoff. Even with a several-inch wide lens you can't collect enough light to drive a sensor at more than a few kilobits/sec. And people hate to keep pointing the sensor at the opposite party.
And if the room has LED or CCFL lighting the interference from those is mighty intense.
1.) There is TCP/IP over Infrared (IrDA) and comes standard on Windows and works also in Linux.
http://web.pdx.edu/~mendyke/ip7780.html
2.) there are many laser link systems out there.
I even worked on one.
http://www.dnull.com/zebraresearch/company-mail.html
3.) The 802.11 standard also includes the 802.11 Infrared (IR) Physical Layer. 802.11 IR defines 1Mbps and 2Mbps operation by bouncing light off ceilings and walls to provide connectivity within a room or small office. This infrared version of the standard has been available since the initial release of the 802.11 standard in 1997.
4.) Spectrix Corporation of Mundelein, Illinois had a proprietary solution for this. I think they are out of business now.
http://books.google.com/books?id=QZrrXcs1R9gC&pg=RA1-PA207&lpg=RA1-PA207&dq=%22Spectrix+Corporation+%22&source=bl&ots=kMxMofcTd7&sig=qd4QvwoREWQloJKwnpmp63j-Z-I&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result
If you explore the link above from the book "Wireless Computing" By Ira Brodsky Published by John Wiley and Sons, 1997. This book goes in a lot of detail about many IP over optical solutions available at that time.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
The article is utter bullshit.
Using light, as opposed to radio waves is NOT more secure, unless the room has no windows, or others areas for light to escape.
Wiring a room to support it could easily cost $300 (you still need atleast one network drop to the room, and mount the transmitter).
Are there environments where the slight advantages it has may be worth it? sure. but they will be so rare that the cost of the device will stay quite high.
THe article looks like a puff piece designed to lure in investors.
"Because light does not travel through walls, cell phones and government and banking information would be more secure."
It's not a bug, it's a feature, really - it is, please believe me.
1996 called. It wants its HP NetBeamIR Infrared Ethernet Access Point back.
IR access points have been around for years, and they work OK. They can even be made to work through diffuse reflections, so you don't have to have a clear line of sight. But you need a lot of access points to cover a space.
There's a bigger team at Boston University that's been working on this technology.
I particularly like their plans for use in cars. I can imagine combining this with nano piezoelectric technology to create roadways that use passing car vibrations to power illuminated markings that can also transmit road condition information to passing cars or link their light-based inter-car networks around corners and over hills.
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades that decode and display ambient porn...