Scientists Explore A Light Bulb-Based Based 10Gbps Li-Fi/5G Home Network

Mark.JUK writes: Researchers at Brunel University in London have begun to develop a new 10 Gbps home wireless network using both Li-Fi (light fidelity) and 5G based mmWave technology, which will fit inside LED (light-emitting diode) light bulbs on your ceiling.

In simple terms, the Visible Light Communication (VLC) based Li-Fi technology works by flicking a LED light off and on thousands of times a second (by altering the length of the flickers you can introduce digital communications).
The article says it'd be more energy efficient (and faster) than a standard Wi-Fi network -- though both technologies have trouble penetrating walls, so "you'd have to buy lots of pricey new bulbs in order to cover your home..."

"It's probably not something that an ordinary home owner would want to install; unless you're happy with running lots of optical fibre cable around your various light fittings."

Useless if you have ...

[CaptainDork]

... dial-up.

Re:

[karnal]

Even when I had dial up, I had a local file server that I wanted fast access to.

Re:

[CaptainDork]

You had 10mips, right?

Re:

[karnal]

10base2!

couldnt this be happening around us right now

[S-HubertCumberdale-F]

I remember hearing a long time ago that the guvmnt was using encoded signals in power lines in order to detect a region a video was based in or something along those lines. What this is now telling me is that pulse width modulating light signals can encode 10 GBPS of data, which I now remember a university was proving with lasers around the time of that other power line story. My whole point is that with with everything being in sight of a network connected camera, there is a whole bunch of floating one-w

Overheard

[Hognoxious]

Test subject: It's giving me a headache!
Scientist: Oh dear. I hope it doesn't get worse when we turn it on.

TY,IHAW,DFTTYW

Between 2 rooms?

[zennling]

If I have devices in 2 separate rooms, how would they communicate? Does it have some high speed ethernet over power built in?