TECH

IEEE standardizes “Li-Fi” 802.11bb, light-based wireless connection with up to 9.6 Gbps

The physical layer of network connections can operate on several different types of data transfer. We are probably most familiar with the classic Ethernet wire or Wi-Fi. However, the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) comes up with another option, namely light. Unofficially, such an interface is called Li-Fi, the standard itself will bear the name IEEE 802.11bb. In a way, it is not completely new, the company Signify (Philips Hue) presented communication using light in the form of Trulifi technology on smart light bulbs already 4 years ago (and it was not the only one). The company pureLiFi and the Fraunhofer HHI institute lobbied for the approval of the new standard.

The advantage of “Li-Fi” is that it does not compete for transmission bands with Wi-Fi, so these technologies do not interfere with each other, and where there is a lot of interference due to congested Wi-Fi, Li-Fi can work without problems. Of course, it will not be completely without problems, for example due to possible sensitivity to ambient light and shading (but this should be partially solved by a sufficiently wide lighting angle of Li-Fi transmitters, i.e. smart lights, I would rather be concerned about shading on the receiver side).

This year, pureLiFi introduced the Light Antenna One lamp, which is supposed to offer speeds of over 1 Gbps at a distance of 20 to 300 cm, uses light with a wavelength of 850±10 nm and a lighting angle of 24°. As for the standard itself, it allows for transmission speed modes from 10 Mbps up to 9.6 Gbps, which is at the level of the maximum of Wi-Fi 6. However, let’s recall that the pureLiFi company already talked about speeds of 224 Gbps in 2015 and demonstrated it even with an attempt.

mundophone