The Blue economy: Introduction to the Li-Fi technology
Hi Steemians, hope that you guys are all doing well! Today we are going to talk about a revolutionary technology that is happening in the Blue economy world, the internet with light, a.k.a Li-Fi! Today, people talk about advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Blockchain technology, but what if there is another revolution that is currently happening right now and that might dramatically improve the life of mankind? That is right folks, the Li-Fi technology is being developed right now and in this post we are going to review its fundamentals and why it is so promising.
1. Who invented the Li-Fi?
The Li-FI was invented by a French professor named Suat Topsu from the University of Versailles. He started to investigate an alternative from the current Wi-Fi technology due to the fact that his wife was pregnant and was worried about wi-fi radiation. In 2009, Prof. Topsu in collaboration with Renault successfully tested the first Li-FI self-driving car prototype.
2. How much better is the Li-Fi compared to the Wi-Fi?
The fastest wireless connection today works at a rate of 100 megabits per second while it is estimated that the Li-Fi can achieve a connection speed of 252 gigabits/second which represents an improvement of 2,500!!!! Just to put it into perspective, the 5G connection is estimated to be used in 2020, and it will be 250 times slower than the Li-Fi!!! This is due to the fact that the Li-Fi use a wider range of frequencies such as infrared and ultraviolet while the Wi-Fi only used to the radio-frequency spectrum. Can you guys imagine the improvement in the gaming industry for instance thanks to the Li-Fi? :D
With a wider range of frequencies, there is much less room for frequency interference like it is the case nowadays with wi-fi connections. To put it into perspective, just think about a skype conversation that you have with a friend. Not sure if you guys notice but sometimes for unknown reasons the connection would eventually be slow. This sometimes can be explained due to some frequency interference with another a wi-fi device from the neighbor for instance.
3. The Li-Fi technology is completely decentralized
Yes the Li-Fi is a completely decentralized technology and I am going to put it into perspective with self driving cars. Let me first remind you that cars kill around 1.2 million people worldwide, so it is the highest cause of death. Giants within the automobile/tech industry such as Tesla, BMW or Google are investing massive amount of money to build self driving cars. There is only one problem. Self driving cars as we know them today are heavily centralized. They rely on wi-fi GPS guidance system which can be hacked and which in turn rely on satellites from the space. Li-Fi self driving car system would use a radically different approach. It would allow each car to directly talk to each other thanks to Light Emitting Diodes (LED) and thus eliminate the need for a GPS satellite based system. Needless to say that this will be a lot faster.
There is another important aspect that should be mentioned here. The geolocation system of Li-Fi based self-driving cars would be in the order of centimeters while for Wi-fi based self-driving cars it is in the order of tens of meters! This means that the Li-Fi allows to know the exact position of cars, while the Wi-Fi allows for quite some uncertainty. This difference can avoid a lot of accidents (especially if you take to account the fact that Li-Fi technology self-driving cars would directly talk to each other) !!!!
4. Li-Fi works everywhere
Li-Fi is not disrupted by heavy tunnels, underground tunnels or heavy metal-like buildings. It is therefore much more practical!!!
5-Li-Fi cannot be hacked guys!!!!
That is right, any computer that is connected to Li-Fi cannot be hacked as of today. The reason is because the Li-Fi connection only works directly with the light beam that is emitted by the LED light. Each light means unique connections points based on the amount of diodes it originally has (ISP address).
6- Li-Fi is totally healthy.
This is a big big parameter. Many people do not know that prolonged radio-wave radiation from the wi-fi can actually be very bad for our health and our children's health. Many concerns have arisen and currently many studies are currently being done about it. In fact some experts are starting to consider the fact that the wi-fi of today can become the cigarette of the 1970s. On the other hand, Li-Fi is totally healthy, since it is light based.
Are you one of the first 100 persons to have the MyLifi at your home. This internet connection per light is the first home application. And will be remembered like the little Macs! [2] Gunter Pauli, Twitter, January 2018
Conclusion
This was a brief introduction to introduce the revolutionary Li-Fi technology. It far outcompetes the wi-fi in all aspects that we have discussed. In a future post, we will review that technology more in depth and we will discuss some of its other potential applications, especially in hospitals.
P.S. It is my understanding that the Li-Fi will be commercialized in France at the end of this summer. They are already taking pre-orders as I speak for those who are interested :) !
juv79505 sincerely thank you for reading this article. Please feel free to comment below in case you have ideas, questions, suggestions or simply want to criticize this article. Also, note that all pictures used in this article were extracted from the google section “pictures labeled for commercial reuse”. Stay tuned for more articles on health, environment, artificial intelligence, technology, geography, history, sports or video games.
References.
[1] LiFi Communicationa at the speed of light and the emergence of the Internet of people, by Gunter Pauli with Jurriaan Kamp. Advanced Copy uncorrected proof.
[2] https://twitter.com/i/web/status/952530299639955456
Pictures
Picture 1 was taken from https://goo.gl/9ecVM1
Picture 2 was taken from https://goo.gl/RSPBXV
Picture 3 was taken from https://goo.gl/JBLxQs
Picture 4 was taken from https://goo.gl/Akf6sB
Picture 5 was taken from https://goo.gl/GWyksE
Picture 6 was taken from https://goo.gl/hgB56f
Picture 7 was taken from https://goo.gl/gzyChy
Whoa I have never heard of this exciting new technology! This sounds very promising and it could solve a lot of problems. With average file sizes growing so much these days, upload/download speeds have been suffering. I'm excited for much faster speeds! Thanks for sharing this information with us. I am going to resteem this awesome news
@falseyedols yeah it is very very exciting times right now :) !! Yeah I really believe that Li-Fi is going to revolutionize many many industries that is why to me it is definitely comparable to Blockchain and AI.
"With average file sizes growing so much these days, upload/download speeds have been suffering. " Yes you are totally right and the demand keeps on increasing and increasing. We are approaching an era of smart fridges, smart alarms systems, smart washing machines and so on, and w-fi just won't be able to deliver on all of those things (even the upcoming 5G). That is also why I think that IPFS will also be a big big help. You are very welcome my friend. Thank you a lot for commenting and resteeming my article, I appreciate it :D !!!
Question, how dangerous is this light for the eyes and eyesight?
What's the difference with Wi-fi light?
I've got a lot of health issues so I need to be careful before jumping technology bandwagons.
@binkyprod Thank you for reading and commenting my article!! Regarding your question, it is my understanding so far that the type of LED lights that are used for Li-Fi are not harmful to the eye at all. In fact, the combination of diodes used allow for not only the color blue to pass (which was originally coated with phosphorous in the early 2000's to show an artificial white light and was responsible for insomnia and stress on the eye) but also for other visible colors. I am currently reading in depth the Li-Fi book to fully understand the technology underneath it so I will post an update regarding this post and your question soon. If I find while reading it that there is even a tiniest room for problems with sensitive eyes I will post about it no worries. So stay tuned :) .
You also wrote "What's the difference with Wi-fi light". The difference is due to the fact that Wi-Fi only uses the radiofrequency spectrum while the Li-Fi uses a much broader spectrum of frequencies including infrared and ultraviolet. You can also refer to my reply below to a previous comment.
Please let me know if you have further questions. I will be more than happy to discuss it.
Thank you again for reading my article :)
Thank you for answering at length. I've started following you so I can catch any updates you may post.
You're very welcome and sounds good! :)
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Thank you so much! :)
Good post but... Wi-Fi is a type of light. Just not visible light.
Thank you for commenting. Just to clarify. Wi-Fi only uses the radio-frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. Li-Fi, on the other hand, uses a much wider spectrum including infrared and ultraviolet that we, human beings cannot see. Wi-fi only uses a few thousands of frequency while Li-Fi (the full spectrum of light) uses much more(a billion of frequency). Wi-Fi simply cannot compete with Li-Fi.