Researchers Beam 230Mb/sec Wireless Internet WIth LEDs

MikeChino writes "A group of scientists from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute have devised a way to encode a visible-frequency wireless signal in light emitted by plain old desklamps and other light fixtures. The team was able to achieve a record-setting data download rate of 230 megabits per second, and they expect to be able to double that speed in the near future. While the regular radio-frequency Wi-Fi most of us use currently is perfectly fine, it does have its flaws — it has a limited bandwidth that confines it to a certain spectrum and if you've ever had someone leech off of your connection, you know that it also leaks through walls. LED wireless signals would theoretically have none of these downsides."

Just different ones

[MozeeToby]

LED wireless signals would theoretically have none of these downsides.

Nope, instead it'll have a whole range of different ones, such as requiring line of site.

Re:No upsides either

[maxume]

That's a huge upside for linking up video devices though. No interference from the neighbors, no interference from the other room.

Re:Just different ones

[Uranium-238]

You know what he meant really and he's quite right too. People could dick with these connections by putting a piece of paper infront of the transmitter or receiver. This just sounds like a uesless idea.

Utterly Stupid....

[loose electron]

If you really want to use optical communocation you might as well go infrared so you don't need to see it, similar to your TV remote.

Then you have all the problems (visible light or infrared) of orientation, line of sight and similar.

Hopefully the creator of this gadget has not quit their day job.

utterly stupid.

Re:Just different ones

[Chris Burke]

And losing your network connection because you were sitting at the wrong end of the conference table in your meeting would be a huge minus.

And having the signal stop at the wall but not at the window sounds like a major ding to the "huge plus", not to mention a recipe for a false sense of security.

In either case you'd have to secure your wireless network in a traditional fashion. So, why not just do that, and get the benefit of non-line-of-sight communication too?

IrDA died for a good reason.

[teh dave]

In case they hadn't noticed, IrDA is dead for a good reason. The fact that the last two versions of it are much faster than Bluetooth (2.x) is irrelevant, it's too much of an inconvenience for most of its potential users in comparison to Bluetooth. It was great before Bluetooth came about and I used the latest versions of it with my old phone because it was much faster than Bluetooth, and I never had a problem with it for that purpose. Most potential users prefer the convenience of Bluetooth though, for obvious reasons. My new phone doesn't have IrDA, and hardly any new phones do, and as far as consumers go, that technology is all but dead. I can see LED networking going the same way.

Re:No upsides either

[h4rr4r]

If your room has no windows.

Re:Just different ones

[h4rr4r]

IR is slow as hell and prone to interference from the sun! Sounds like a real winner

Re:No upsides either

[petermgreen]

More than that even if you use LED lights you have the issue of the power supplies to contend with. I bet most PSUs won't pass through high frequency modulations.

So you are talking about either rewiring your lights with a low voltage distribution system of some sort (possible but the cables get very big) or replacing the LED PSUs with something that can carry a signal across (say homeplug one side LED modulation the other)

There is also the question of what to do for the return link.

All in all nice idea but it needs some work to turn it into a practical product.

Re:Just different ones

[t0p]

Or brick up all the windows. You won't need 'em with all the flashing LEDs to read by.