There are certain fundamental limitations when it comes to current wireless communications. Mostly it comes down to the bandwidth of the frequencies used as more devices come online the more congested they become. Simply changing frequencies isn’t enough to solve the problem however, especially when it comes to technology that’s as ubiquitous as wifi. This is what has driven many to look for alternative technologies, some looking to make the interference work for us whilst others are looking at doing away with radio frequencies entirely. Li-Fi is a proposed technology that uses light instead of RF to transmit data and, whilst it posits speeds up to 100 times faster than conventional wifi, I doubt it will ever become the wireless communication technology of choice.
Li-Fi utilizes standard light bulbs that are switched on and off in nanoseconds, too fast for the human eye to perceive any change in the output of the light. Whilst the lights need to remain in an on state in order to transmit data they are apparently able to still transmit when the light level is below that which the human eye can perceive. A direct line of sight isn’t required for the technology to work either as light reflected off walls was still able to produce a usable, albeit significantly reduced, data signal. The first commercial products were demonstrated sometime last year so the technology isn’t just a nice theory.
However such technology is severely limited by numerous factors. The biggest limitation is the fact that it can’t work without near or direct line of sight between the sender and receiver which means that a transmitter is required in every discrete room that you want to use your receiver in. This also means that whatever is feeding data into those transmitters, like say a cabled connection, also need to be present. Compared to a wifi endpoint, which usually just needs to be placed in a central location to work, this is a rather heavy requirement to satisfy.
Worse still this technology cannot work outside due to sunlight overpowering the signal. This likely also means that any indoor implementation would suffer greatly if there was sunlight entering the room. Thus the idea that Li-Fi would be 100 times faster than conventional wifi is likely just laboratory numbers and not representative of the real world performance.
The primary driver for technologies like these is convenience, something which Li-Fi simply can’t provide given its current limitations. Setting up a Li-Fi system won’t be as easy as screwing in a few new light bulbs, it will likely require some heavy investment in either cabling infrastructure or ethernet-over-power systems to support them. Compare this to any wifi endpoint which just needs one data connection to cover a large area (which can be set up in minutes) and I’m not sure customers will care how fast Li-Fi can be, especially if they also have to buy a new smartphone to use it.
I’m sure there will be some niche applications of this technology but past that I can’t really see it catching on. Faster speeds are always great but they’re all for naught if the limitations on their use are as severe as they are with Li-Fi. Realistically you can get pretty much the same effect with a wired connection and even then the most limiting factor is likely your Internet connection, not your interconnect. Of course I’m always open to being proved wrong on this but honestly I can’t see it happening.
