Li-Fi: Inventor hailed for light bulb wi-fi21 December 2011

A University of Edinburgh engineer has beennamed among the top inventors in the world inhigh-profile publications.

Both TIME and the Huffington Post's reviews of theworld's best new technologies have featuredProfessor Harald Haas' system of wirelesslytransmitting an internet signal through LED lightbulbs.

Professor Haas' team has taken advantage of thefact that LED lights may be switched on and offmany times per second, to develop their technique,known as Li-Fi.

The system uses electronics to harness thevariable light intensity in the bulbs to transmit datawirelessly.

TIME magazine described Professor Haas' idea asamong the top 50 inventions of the year. Themagazine said: 'Like many other great inventors,Haas developed a solution [to carrying increasingamounts of data] using things we have inabundance: chiefly the world's 14 billion lightbulbs.'

In an article in the Huffington Post, Li-Fi was listedamong 18 groundbreaking ideas to watch in 2012.Professor Haas was invited to contribute a blogentry for the Post's website.

Li-Fi was developed as an alternative to carryingdata on radio frequencies, which are becomingincreasingly crowded with the growth insmartphone and tablet PC use.

The system has unique advantages in that it canbe used in areas where radio frequency is notdesirable.

This includes hospitals, or where radio frequencysimply cannot be used, such us underwater.

The system also benefits from an existing lightinginfrastructure and therefore does require huge

investments.

It also offers greater security by keeping theinternet signal inside the room in which the light isbeing used.

The University has spun-out a company, VLC, tocommercialise the idea.

"We are heading to saturation point in terms of howefficiently we can use the radio frequencyspectrum. The only way out of this is to find newways to transmit data wirelessly." said ProfessorHarald Haas.

Provided by University of Edinburgh

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APA citation: Li-Fi: Inventor hailed for light bulb wi-fi (2011, December 21) retrieved 22 April 2018 from https://phys.org/news/2011-12-li-fi-inventor-hailed-bulb-wi-fi.html

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