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Scientists Explore A Light Bulb-Based Based 10Gbps Li-Fi/5G Home Network (ispreview.co.uk)
Mark.JUK writes: Researchers at Brunel University in London have begun to develop a new 10 Gbps home wireless network using both Li-Fi (light fidelity) and 5G based mmWave technology, which will fit inside LED (light-emitting diode) light bulbs on your ceiling.
In simple terms, the Visible Light Communication (VLC) based Li-Fi technology works by flicking a LED light off and on thousands of times a second (by altering the length of the flickers you can introduce digital communications).
The article says it'd be more energy efficient (and faster) than a standard Wi-Fi network -- though both technologies have trouble penetrating walls, so "you'd have to buy lots of pricey new bulbs in order to cover your home..."
"It's probably not something that an ordinary home owner would want to install; unless you're happy with running lots of optical fibre cable around your various light fittings."
In simple terms, the Visible Light Communication (VLC) based Li-Fi technology works by flicking a LED light off and on thousands of times a second (by altering the length of the flickers you can introduce digital communications).
The article says it'd be more energy efficient (and faster) than a standard Wi-Fi network -- though both technologies have trouble penetrating walls, so "you'd have to buy lots of pricey new bulbs in order to cover your home..."
"It's probably not something that an ordinary home owner would want to install; unless you're happy with running lots of optical fibre cable around your various light fittings."
... dial-up.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I remember hearing a long time ago that the guvmnt was using encoded signals in power lines in order to detect a region a video was based in or something along those lines. What this is now telling me is that pulse width modulating light signals can encode 10 GBPS of data, which I now remember a university was proving with lasers around the time of that other power line story. My whole point is that with with everything being in sight of a network connected camera, there is a whole bunch of floating one-wire (or as many wires as you want) signals all around us lacking any data. The human eye cant detect lights being turned off then back on that fast, it just looks like it is on, maybe slightly dimmer. How hard will it be to hijack this open yet hidden communication system. I guess you could even just point your phone at an led, and if someone else had access to the light sensor, you could communicate basically completely silently and without any tells
Test subject: It's giving me a headache!
Scientist: Oh dear. I hope it doesn't get worse when we turn it on.
TY,IHAW,DFTTYW
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Seems like a bad idea but the article is blessedly untainted by technical details so it's hard to say much more about it.
Are they going to be using laser diodes, I wonder?
If I have devices in 2 separate rooms, how would they communicate? Does it have some high speed ethernet over power built in?
Who wants their lights to be on every time they want to surf the web, watch Netflix or any other network based activity which these days is everything...
Seriously, PoE is a thing, which would cover the data and power. Sure 10Gbps PoE is kinda expensive though...