ABSTARCT

Li-Fi stands for Light-Fidelity. The technology is very new

and was proposed by the German physicist Harald Haas in
2011.
Li-Fi provides transmission of data through illumination by
sending data through an LED light bulb that varies in
intensity faster than human eye can follow.
In this paper, the authors will discuss the technology in
detail and also how Wi-Fi can be replaced by Li-Fi.
Wi-Fi is useful for general wireless coverage within buildings
while Li-Fi is ideal for high density wireless data coverage in
confined areas where there are no obstacles.
Li-Fi is a wireless optical networking technology that uses
light emitting diodes (LEDs) for transmission of data.
The term Li-Fi refers to visible light communication (VLC)
technology that uses as medium to deliver high-speed
communication in a manner similar to Wi-Fi.
Li-Fi provides better bandwidth, efficiency, availability and
security than Wi-Fi and has already achieved high speeds in
the lab.
In the present paper the authors will give a detailed study
on Li-Fi technology, its advantages and its future scope.
 INTRODUCTION

Professor Harald Haas, the Chair of Mobile Communications at the University of

Edinburgh, is recognized as the founder of Li-Fi. He coined the term Li-Fi and is the co-
founder of pureLiFi. He gave a demonstration of a Li-Fi prototype at the TED Global
conference in Edinburgh on 12th July 2011. He used a table lamp with an LED bulb to
transmit a video of a blooming flower that was then projected onto a screen. During the
talk, he periodically blocked the light from the lamp with his hand to show that the lamp
was indeed the source of the video data. Li-Fi can be regarded as light-based Wi-Fi, i.e.
instead of radio waves it uses light to transmit data. In place of Wi-Fi modems, Li-Fi would
use transceivers fitted with LED lamps that could light a room as well as transmit and
receive information. It makes use of the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum
which is underutilized. Li-Fi can be considered better than Wi-Fi because there are some
limitations in Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi uses 2.4 – 5 GHz radio frequencies to deliver wireless internet
access and its bandwidth is limited to 50-100 Mbps. With the increase in the number of
Wi-Fi hotspots and volume of Wi-Fi traffic, the reliability of signals is bound to suffer.
Security and speed are also important concerns. Wi-Fi communication is vulnerable to
hackers as it penetrates easily through walls. . In his TED talk, Professor Haas highlighted
the following key problems of Wi-Fi that need to be overcome in the near future

a) Capacity: The radio waves used by Wi-Fi to transmit data are limited as well as expensive. With
the development of 3G and 4G technologies, the amount of available spectrum is running out.

b) Efficiency: There are 1.4 million cellular radio masts worldwide. These masts consume massive
amounts of energy, most of which is used for cooling the station rather than transmission of radio
waves. In fact, the efficiency of such stations is only 5%.

c) Availability: Radio waves cannot be used in all environments, particularly in airplanes, chemical
and power plants and in hospitals.

d) Security: Radio waves can penetrate through walls. This leads to many security concerns as they
can be easily intercepted. Li-Fi addresses the aforementioned issues with Wi-Fi as follows:
a) Capacity: The visible light spectrum is 10,000 times wider than the
spectrum of radio waves. Additionally, the light sources are already installed.
Hence Li-Fi has greater bandwidth and equipment which is already available.

b) Efficiency: LED lights consume less energy and are highly efficient.

c) Availability: Light sources are present in all corners of the world. Hence,
availability is not an issue. The billions of light bulbs worldwide need only be
replaced by LEDs.

d) Security: Light of course does not penetrate through walls and thus data
transmission using light waves is more secure.
light LEDs produce more light per watt than do
incandescent bulbs

ON-OFF Time LEDs can light up very quickly

toxicity Unlike fluorescent lamps, LEDs do not contain

mercury

Free band Li-Fi makes use of a free band that does not need
any licensing

High speeds Li-Fi makes use of a free band that does not need
any licensing

airlines Li-Fi can be used safely in aircrafts without

affecting airline signals unlike Wi-Fi

healthcare It can be integrated into medical devices and in

hospitals as no radio waves are involved

underwater Wi-Fi does not work underwater but Li-Fi does

and hence can be used for undersea explorations
The applications of Li-Fi are derived from many of these
benefits and will be studied in detail in later sections.
Frank Deicke, who leads Li-Fi development at Fraunhofer
Institute for Photonic Microsystems in Dresden, Germany,
has said that Li-Fi can achieve the same data rates as USB
cables which is challenging for wireless technologies such as
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
He also cites another advantage of Li-Fi being that the
latency of Li-Fi is in the order of microseconds where as that
of Wi-Fi is in the order of milliseconds.
With the above benefits encouraging us to adopt this new
technology, the actual need for Li-Fi can be confirmed from
Cisco’s Visual Network Index which suggests that user
demand is increasing faster than gains in spectral efficiency.
 WORKING OF LI-FI

General Working Principle

Light emitting diodes (LEDs) can be switched
on and off faster than the human eye can detect since the
operating speed of LEDs is less than 1 μs, thereby causing the light
source to appear to be continuously on. This invisible on-off activity
enables data transmission using binary codes. Switching on an LED
is binary ‘1’, switching it off is binary ‘0’.
It is possible to encode data in light by varying the rate at which
LEDs flicker on and off to give different strings of 1s and 0s.
Modulation is so rapid that humans cannot notice it. A light
sensitive device (photo detector) then receives the signal and
converts it back into original data.
This method of using rapid pulses of light to transmit information
wirelessly is technically referred to as Visible Light Communication
(VLC).The term Li-Fi has been inspired due to its potential to
compete with conventional Wi-Fi. The VLC uses visible light
between 400 THz (780 nm) and 800 THz (375 nm) as the optical
carrier for data transmission and for illumination.
Data rates of greater than 100 Mbps can be achieved by using high
speed LEDs with adequate multiplexing. Parallel data transmission
using arrays of LEDs where each LED transmits a separate stream of
data can be used to increase the VLC data rate. Though the lights
have to be kept on in order to transmit data, they can be dimmed
to the point that they are not visible to humans but still be capable
of transmitting data.
Technical Aspects and Modulation

VLC refers to any use of the visible

light portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to transmit
information. A VLC interest group is certified by the IEEE
802.15 with the final standard being approved in 2011.
The standard of VLC specifies VLC consisting of mobile-to-
mobile (M2M), fixed-to-mobile (F2M) and infrastructure-to-
mobile (I2M) communications. The main purpose of VLC is
to focus on medium-range communications for intelligent
traffic systems at low-speed and on short-range mobile to
mobile and fixed to mobile communications at high speeds
to exchange data. Data rates are supported from some 100
kbps up to 100 Mbps using various modulation schemes.
Li-Fi communication is modelled after protocols established
by the IEEE 802 workgroup. It defines physical layer (PHY) &
media access control (MAC) layer for VLC/Li-Fi. The MAC
layer supports 3 multi-access technologies: peer-to-peer,
star configuration and broadcast mode.
 References
1. Shubham Chatterjee, Shalabh Agarwal, Asoke Nath, “scope and Challenges in Light
Fidelity(LiFi)Technology in Wireless Data Communication”, International Journal of Innovative
Research in Advanced Engineering(IJIRAE), Issue 6, Vol 2, Page 1-9,(June 2015).

2. Savage, Neil (2014). Li-Fi Gets Ready to Compete with Wi-Fi

http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/lifi-gets-ready-to-compete-with-wifi

3. Quick, Darren (2014). 10 Gbps Li-Fi System Shows Wireless Data Transfer in New Light
http://www.gizmag.com/li-fi-wireless-technology/32968/

4. Cuthbertson, Anthony (2015). LiFi Internet Breakthrough: 224 Gbps Connection Broadcast with
an LED bulb http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/lifi-internetbreakthrough-224gbps-connection-broadcast-
led-bulb-1488204

5. https://www.eng.ed.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/projects/li-fi-wireless-communications-6-
projects

6. S. Vinay Kumar, K. Sudhakar, L. Sudha Rani (2014). Emerging Technology Li-Fi over Wi-
Fi ,International Journal of Inventive Engineering and Sciences (IJIES), Vol. 2 Issue 3, February 2014

7. “Harald Haas: Wireless data from every light bulb” , https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=NaoSp4NpkGg

8 Sunandan, Pratyush (2015). The End of Wi-Fi Era is Here: Li-Fi,

https://www.thehdtimes.com/end-of-wi-fi-era-li-fi/

9. Li-Fi: Light Fidelity. http://www.erewise.com/current-affairs/li-fi-technology-light-

fidelity_art53046b047a994.html#.VX2WtPmqqis

10. https://technozip.wordpress.com/technology/li-fi-technology/

11. Owano, Nancy (2012). Li-Fi: Edinburgh Prof Seeds LEDs for Communication,
http://phys.org/news/2012-10-li-fi-edinburgh-prof-seeds.html .

12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode .