Let LiFi light up your network

In 2011, Professor Harald Haas of the University of Edinburgh gave a talk at TED, introducing a new technology, LiFi, that is, optical communication technology, which can transmit data through the optical signal emitted by a characteristic LED to provide a low-cost high-speed wireless network. In the laboratory, data transmission speeds can reach nearly 10Gb/s, more than ten times that of existing WiFi networks. The concept of LiFi is gradually known.

Recently, PureLiFi, a company founded by Prof. Haas, received a financing of 1.5 million pounds, or about 2.25 million U.S. dollars, and the company's valuation also increased to 21 million U.S. dollars. The company has emerged from the University of Edinburgh. Early investors include the University of Edinburgh, the Scottish Government’s corporate funds, and some private equity funds. In the latest round of financing, investors included LSIP (London and Scottish Investment Group), Scottish Investment Bank, Old College Capital and the University of Edinburgh Fund. This round of financing will be mainly used for product development, marketing and product sales. According to MarketsandMarkets statistics, by 2020, the VLC industry's market capacity will reach 9 billion US dollars.

In LiFi, besides PureLiFi, Shanghai Fudan University has also developed related technologies and debuted at the Shanghai Industry Fair in 2013. The basic principle is to divert the light source like a shower head, and then turn the LED on and off millions of times in one millisecond by controlling the light switch to transmit a large number of binary data consisting of 0 and 1.

Most of PureLiFi's research is still in the laboratory. Most of the small commercial products that have been launched are still in the closed-door, in-house and in-house testing phase. In 2013, a medical service provider in the United States became its first customer. In 2014, Li-1st came out and can realize two-way data transmission. It is only open to cooperative customers.

At the end of 2014, PureLiFi released Li-Flame, which is also an industry-oriented partner, but its significance is far greater than the previous two products, which can be converted into existing LiFi APs. The entire device includes a USB receiver that connects to the LiFi AP to access the network.

According to Professor Harald Haas, in addition to providing higher bandwidth, LiFi's security is also unmatched by current WiFi networks. The characteristics of light determine that it cannot transmit signals through the wall. At the same time, the uplink and downlink channels of LiFi are independent. The hacker must be in the same room and invade the two channels to complete a real attack.

However, PureLiFi did not disclose the time for the launch of consumer-grade products. We still need to wait.