Technology advances so fast that sometimes we run out of time to find names for new inventions. One of the latest examples has been quite paradoxical and comes to put an end to WiFi forever. You thought that transmitting an Internet connection by waves was futuristic? A group of experts has just managed to do it—with light. The best part? They want you to do it too, at an incredibly high speed, and with this detail everyone’s talking about.
WiFi has come to an end in America: The future works with light and will change everything
A technology called Light Fidelity, commonly known by its abbreviation as LiFi is set to redefine wireless communication in the United States in the very near future. LiFi is a wireless light communication system that operates through light, and it can use visible light or infrared light as the communication medium.
LiFi as a technology is based on the unutilized spectrum of light, in contrast to traditional WiFi based on radio frequencies, thus providing a faster, more secure, and more efficient Internet connection. LiFi’s main concept lies in the use of light to vary the signals and carry different forms of digital information.
We know what’s meant by WiFi but, what happens with LiFi? Beyond the “data-transferring light”
A LiFi system is made up of a light source, (as the LED bulb like the most common one), a photodetector, and other signal processing tools. In the case of the LED bulb, it becomes a wireless router by rapidly blinking the light to send binary information. Another component of the system is the photodetector, which, similar to the LED light, can be integrated into a user device.
Still, the defining difference between LiFi and WiFi is the amount of bandwidth on the light spectrum LiFi gets, something that we can explain in some keys:
- While WiFi operates on radio frequencies up to 6 GHz, visible light, on the other hand, operates up to 200,000 GHz, meaning there is virtually an unlimited amount of bandwidth for data transmission.
- Performing various experiments, it has been demonstrated that LiFi has the capability to provide connection speeds of up to 224 Gbps, which makes it over 100 times faster than WiFi.
LiFi has burst into America and is revolutionizing the country: How it’s being developed here
Thus, the dynamic performance of LiFi has a great impact on the wireless communication. Some key figures demonstrating LiFi’s superiority over WiFi include:
- Data Rates: LiFi can go up to 224 Gbps while WiFi 6 – the latest version – has a theoretical speed of 6 Gbps only.
- Latency: LiFi on the other hand, has a very low latency, measured at a mere 0. 5 milliseconds, which is markedly less than the WiFi’s common latency of 20–30 milliseconds.
- Security: LiFi is more secure compared to Wi-Fi as the signals from the LiFi light cannot penetrate the walls, thus restricting people from eavesdropping and accessing the signal inappropriately.
- Interference: LiFI cannot be affected by other electricity-based signals, unlike WiFi which can be easily interfered with.
- Energy Efficiency: LiFi systems use fewer power units than Wi-Fi since LED bulbs, which are used in signaling, are efficient.
Since then, LiFi has grown quickly, and today, many companies and research institutions are working on LiFi commercially. Currently, the LiFi market situation in the United States is favorably developing and will continue to grow in the future. Thus, in the estimation of the MarketsandMarkets report, the progress of LiFi in North America is to grow up to $2 billion.
As the experts continue to debate about moving towards an increasingly less hypothetical “6G” or backwards to 0G (as we saw last week), others have beaten them to it. The key now is LiFi, which will not only kill WiFi, but also enable more resilient, efficient and sustainable networks in the long term. The excessive power consumption of AI is best left for another time, as we have not yet thought of a solution.
