Li-Fi, Light-Based Networking Standard Released (tomshardware.com) 87
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: Today, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has added 802.11bb as a standard for light-based wireless communications. The publishing of the standard has been welcomed by global Li-Fi businesses, as it will help speed the rollout and adoption of the data-transmission technology standard. Advantages of using light rather than radio frequencies (RF) are highlighted by Li-Fi proponents including pureLiFi, Fraunhofer HHI, and the Light Communications 802.11bb Task Group. Li-Fi is said to deliver "faster, more reliable wireless communications with unparalleled security compared to conventional technologies such as Wi-Fi and 5G." Now that the IEEE 802.11bb Li-Fi standard has been released, it is hoped that interoperability between Li-Fi systems with the successful Wi-Fi will be fully addressed.
Of course, Li-Fi isn't going to sweep away Wi-Fi and 5G alternatives (nor wired networks). Radio waves still have a distinct advantage with regard to transmission through the atmosphere at great distance, and though opaque objects. Instead, work must concentrate on using horses for courses -- with Li-Fi advantages being harvested where possible. [...] Now the IEEE 802.11bb standard is published, manufacturers can have greater confidence in the ecosystem and start integrating the tech, where suitable. One of the big wheels of Li-Fi, pureLiFi, has already prepared the Light Antenna ONE module for integration into connected devices. This 14.5mm long component is currently being provided to OEMs for evaluation. In its promotional materials the firm suggests that Li-Fi is preferable over Wi-Fi for: more connections without congestion, greater security and privacy, and doing the heavy lifting for the highest bandwidth tasks. We expect to see a far fuller gamut of Li-Fi network devices, and user devices which support the standard, emerge between now and MWC next February.
Of course, Li-Fi isn't going to sweep away Wi-Fi and 5G alternatives (nor wired networks). Radio waves still have a distinct advantage with regard to transmission through the atmosphere at great distance, and though opaque objects. Instead, work must concentrate on using horses for courses -- with Li-Fi advantages being harvested where possible. [...] Now the IEEE 802.11bb standard is published, manufacturers can have greater confidence in the ecosystem and start integrating the tech, where suitable. One of the big wheels of Li-Fi, pureLiFi, has already prepared the Light Antenna ONE module for integration into connected devices. This 14.5mm long component is currently being provided to OEMs for evaluation. In its promotional materials the firm suggests that Li-Fi is preferable over Wi-Fi for: more connections without congestion, greater security and privacy, and doing the heavy lifting for the highest bandwidth tasks. We expect to see a far fuller gamut of Li-Fi network devices, and user devices which support the standard, emerge between now and MWC next February.
Didn't they used to have this? (Score:5, Funny)
I think they were called semaphore towers.
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Are you trying to tell me your smile isn't compatible with mine?
Re: Didn't they used to have this? (Score:1)
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Datapoint had the "ARClight" infrared building-to-building hop as part of its ARCnet system as early as the 1970s.
You'd lose the link in fog - but the ARCnet segments on each end of the link would reconfigure in a fraction of a second into two stand-alone nets and back into a unified net as the link went and came back.
Re:Didn't they used to have this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, fundamentally, at level 1, all network protocols boil down to 'doing a morse-type code really really fast.'
The question is, are you sending pulses of electricity, pulses of radio frequency radiation, pulses of light through a waveguide, pulses of light through free-space optics, pulses of sound, or some other physical pulse?
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The coding used is important too. Wikipedia says they are using on/off keying with Manchester coding to make the clock recoverable.
I was expecting something fancier but I guess the clever part is in detecting the bits in a room with constantly changing lighting (e.g. a video playing on a screen), motion, reflections and so on. We reached the point where the modulation can be below the noise floor a while back, e.g. with LoRa. I wonder if it's that complex or they are using something simpler.
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Re:Didn't they used to have this? (Score:4, Funny)
I, for one, want my LiFi nodes to look like Terry Pratchett's clacks towers.
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Yeah, we already have this. It's called Wi-Fi. Light and radio waves are exactly the same thing, after all, just different frequencies.
Though to be even more pedantic, I believe the original 802.11 spec actually had a IR based backhaul so it technically already supported a light based physical layer.
WiFi extender? (Score:2)
"speeds as fast as 224 GB/s" is pretty interesting. I'll be curious to see the price point on this. If its cheap enough it could be a viable alternative to stringing ethernet cable through a building, and it could be a way to extend your home WiFi network to outdoor locations.
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You need to string the ethernet cable to the lightbulbs, otherwise it does not work. Unsurprisingly, Li-Fi does not penetrate walls. This is purely a last-few-meter technology.
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I'm assuming there will be some kind of transceiver that works in accordance with this standard. For consumer-grade devices (assuming there will be any) it could accept an ethernet cable and/or connect to local WiFi. The counterpart device could be anywhere there is line of sight and a power supply. Or it could be PoE.
So it could go in your attic for example to get networking from one end of the house to the other without a cable. Or from the house out into the yard somewhere.
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WiFi doesn't travel very far, especially inside a building. It doesn't work reliably from one end of my house to the other. Hence the 'WiFi extender' use case I mentioned. Obviously you would require line-of-sight though, which would reduce availability.
Re: WiFi extender? (Score:2)
Then use a homeplug powerline - Ethernet over power- adapter.
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224GB/s is gonna need fiber. But point taken. (I don't believe the speeds in real-world use will be anywhere near that, personally)
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https://lifi.co/lifi-product/l... [lifi.co]
They're not listing price. And not listing price USUALLY means that you can't afford it.
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Your link does actually show a price when I looked - $599 for a LiFi-enabled tablet.
From what I'm seeing the tech uses LED's. I bet there will be commodity devices that sell by the handful on Amazon.
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Yeah but you have to string fiber optics just like any other kind of cable, and that is inconvenient.
Horses for courses? (Score:4, Funny)
Radio waves still have a distinct advantage with regard to transmission through the atmosphere at great distance, and though opaque objects. Instead, work must concentrate on using horses for courses – with Li-Fi advantages being harvested where possible.
Did someone use ChatGPT to write an article about LiFi?
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opaque objects sounds weird too.
Maybe Mr. Ed wrote it?
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I think they mean the objects were not jellyfish.
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opaque objects sounds weird too.
Watch more CSPAN, you'll get use to it. :-)
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work must concentrate on using horses for courses - with Li-Fi advantages being harvested where possible.
This is alluding to communicating on the Dark Web, when it's best to use Shadowfax.
Re:Horses for courses? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Horses for courses? (Score:4, Informative)
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"Rather than concentrate on how LiFi can't do some of the things WiFi can do, figure out what LiFi can do better, and use it in those situations, and figure out what WiFi can do better, and use it in those situations.
Again in the context of the sentence how does that make sense?:
Radio waves still have a distinct advantage with regard to transmission through the atmosphere at great distance, and though opaque objects. Instead, work must concentrate on using horses for courses – with Li-Fi advantages being harvested where possible.
Rather than transmitting through the atmosphere, must focus on doing things differently. Okay. How?? Li-Fi is a light-based wireless standard; how else does it get transmitted? If they were prosing optical fiber, that sentence might make sense. Also the part about "harvesting advantages" seems like word salad.
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Replace "horses for courses" with "where it makes sense". Means the same thing.
Instead, work must concentrate on using it where it makes sense - with Li-Fi advantages being harvested where possible.
It is perfectly understandable, if the idiom exists in your wheelhouse. But like all idioms, makes very little sense if the idiom is not normally used by you.
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"instead work must concentrate on using it where it works well and fitting it into an overall networking strategy, rather than thinking of it as a universal silver bullet"
Better?
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If you can't figure that out, no one is going to be able to explain it to you. You are either being intentionally obtuse or you just lack the intelligence to understand the context.
It seems like you are offended by someone asking a question and resort to personal attacks.
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Re: Horses for courses? (Score:2)
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It has already been explained to you and you refuse to listen and instead argue with people explaining it to you. So yes you are an illiterate asshole. Want any more insults dipshit?
So yet again, all you will contribute is insults. I wonder if that is because that is all you can contribute. Got it. But if you read my comments, I EXPLAINED why the explanation was not adequate. But that would require you to stop insulting people and read what they wrote.
Re:Horses for courses? (Score:5, Funny)
> Did someone use ChatGPT to write an article about LiFi?
It's worse - they used a Brit.
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And now I need conversion because I don't speak ChatGBP
Needs single bounce operation. (Score:2)
If you could bounce it off a surface that would open up more use cases than pure line of sight.
Re:Needs single bounce operation. (Score:5, Funny)
If you could bounce it off a surface that would open up more use cases than pure line of sight.
!sdrawkcab eb dluow atad eht lla neht tuB
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Only if you use circular polarization or linear polarization at 45 degrees to vertical/horizontal.
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Seems like OFDM could be adapted?
Still it seems ideal for a KVM for my 'phone'.
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Is there a reason you think bounce would not work? Li-Fi works by modulating the existing lights in the building. As long as you can detect the light, no matter how many bounces, you should be fine.
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Speckle is going to be bad for SNR. There are ways to make the photons in the beam mostly decoherent to get rid of speckle, but a plain old modulated laser beam has problems.
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Everything currently being sold is line-of sight, as far as I can tell. And expensive, given that prices are mysteriously never given.
Give me X-Ray-Fi or give me death! (Score:2)
I'm sure there's a killer app for X-Ray LASERS out there somewhere! *probably involves sharks*
Seriously though, if we can get cheap, reliable x- or gamma-ray lasers, just think of the bandwidth. Of course, for safety reasons, the use cases would be much more limited than WiFi or LiFi.
Oh, and yes, I know (Score:1)
Wi/Li-Fi don't require lasers. But it's so much more exciting to talk about lasers. And sharks.
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It would be easier by laser - there are plenty of fast-switching lasers, not so much fast-switching light bulbs.
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But Li-Fi using lasers would not work, as the lasers would have to aim at the receiver. Li-Fi replaces the existing room lighting.
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https://lifi.co/lifi-products/ [lifi.co]
https://lifi.co/lifi-product/m... [lifi.co]
Ok, this certainly makes it sound like you're right. If it exists, they don't include a photo. The speeds, though, are 1/5th those advertised for their other products, which would suggest that switching speed is important.
https://lifi.co/lifi-product/l... [lifi.co]
Their pretty pictures would suggest that it's also very short-range between access points and computers.
Ok, my guess is that we're both right. They may well use lasers between access points, but
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*probably involves sharks*
Then TFA would need to be fixed to say:
work must concentrate on using sea-horses for courses
Security? Close the Curtains! (Score:2)
"...reliable wireless communications with unparalleled security". Unparalleled indeed! Now any evil dood with a telescope can sniff the traffic on your LiFi from miles away. Until you close the curtains, that is.
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"...reliable wireless communications with unparalleled security". Unparalleled indeed! Now any evil dood with a telescope can sniff the traffic on your LiFi from miles away. Until you close the curtains, that is.
you mean curtains as in, like, "opaque objects"? brilliant!
Wouldn't this require directly aimed lasers? (Score:2)
What happens when you bump one of the end points slightly out of alignment?
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No, this is just modulating lightbulbs. No lasers, no alignment, just flickering light.
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https://lifi.co/wp-content/upl... [lifi.co]
Based on their pretty pictures, there's a decent cone of light emitted.
Lightfleet (Score:3)
Managed to build an optical switch that could handle 4 channels, back in 2006. It was theoretically scalable to 256 channels, but they were having difficulty with the optics (and the circuit boards - they bought on the cheap for their alpha test rig and the quality of the product definitely showed that). However, if you use the same approach as used by the omniscope, then 256 channels should be a lot more viable.
I definitely see a future for all-optical networking, it really should have been here already - Lightfleet botched it, although their design was great. The chief problem I see is that a lot of the techniques needed are locked up in patents and other IP restrictions, due to the long evolution of optical networking and the highly proprietary nature of the corporations researching such ideas.
I hope Li-Fi actually succeeds, it has been a long time in coming and it would be great if people could FINALLY put products on the table. The higher frequency should allow for very high bandwidth. The chief problem with it is that it'll only work on line-of-sight because of the nature of the beast, and that's going to require a lot of switches and relays in order to get round corners and other obstructions.
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... The chief problem with it is that it'll only work on line-of-sight because of the nature of the beast, and that's going to require a lot of switches and relays in order to get round corners and other obstructions.
Or a lot of mirrors and prisms
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if the idea is to use building lighting infrastructure, And every room has some lighting that ought to be visible from anywhere in the room.
Seems people could just use networking over the electrical wiring to create mesh networks for backhauling the LiFi Perhaps have a new type of cable that can carry both network and utility power - like some kind of twisted pair cable, but 12 AWG for linking LiFi fixtures?
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Luckily light bulbs are line-of-sight too...
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IRDA used to be popular for syncing data between computers and PDAs. I used it for a product at work once, and found you could get a few megabits from it with cheap hardware.
Later I experimented with visible light comms for some hobby stuff. I wrote a little bit of Javascript that encoded some configuration data as flashes of light, and then made a white square on a black background flicker on and off. With a photodiode I found I was able to send data from the screen of my phone to a microcontroller, but it
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I wrote a little bit of Javascript that encoded some configuration data as flashes of light, and then made a white square on a black background flicker on and off. With a photodiode I found I was able to send data from the screen of my phone to a microcontroller, but it was a bit finnicky.
All Hail The Timex Datalink [hodinkee.com]!
Bad for privacy... (Score:2)
Researchers can already deduce cryptographic keys from the blinking of a power led ( https://arstechnica.com/inform... [arstechnica.com] ). Now this tech will give device manufacturers the excuse to put similar detection capabilities in every smart device you buy.
All of a sudden, any person or smart device that can measure the flickering lights can gain intelligence about your home, and I'm guessing that reflected light will work just fine, so any leakage around/through curtains will be enough to reveal a wealth of informati
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Everything old is new again... Wifi used to have t (Score:2)
In the very first wireless LAN standard (802.11, not 802.11b/g/a/n/ac/ax), there is an optional IR PHY. Speeds up to 2 Mbps (just like on RF).
Good to have this back as an option (with massively upgraded speeds).
This was available for Macs in the 80s... (Score:3)
MacWorld and MacUser were advertising an IR based system that used LocalTalk. You aimed all the transceivers at a place on the wall, checked to see if all the frame carrier lights were green, and use that for LAN communication. It wasn't fast, but at the time, Ethernet was either thicknet or coax,
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In the 90s most motherboards came with an IR transceiver header. All my laptops came with IR transceivers. This was once a really a standard feature. Problem was IrDA was slow even compared to a Tokenring network.
Security (Score:2)
802.11ad (Score:2)
This will end up right next to 802.11ad and 802.11.ay in terms of actually getting used.
Series of tubes? (Score:3)
Perhaps if the light could be contained in a series of transparent tubes, glass perhaps, it could get past the problem identified?
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High frequency stock traders turn to laser-network (Score:2)
https://www.extremetech.com/ex... [extremetech.com]
AOptix started off as a US defense contractor, creating a laser-based system that allows for 10Gbps air-to-ground networks over a distance of 200 kilometers (124 mi). Now it wants to bring this technology to the consumer market, supercharging mobile backhaul links (connecting carrier towers to each other, and to the main backbone) and financial trading. By combining adaptive optics and beam steering (to account for swaying towers), AOptix says its laser links work in all wea
VR (Score:3)
Virtual reality headsets could use a very high bandwidth wireless connection, especially for resolutions beyond 6Kâ¦