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Looking Back at Get A Grip Podcast EP 084 - Dr Harald Hass - The Father of LiFi at the Global LiFi Congress
In today’s article, we revisited a Get a Grip Lighting podcast episode 084 held around June 2019 at the Global LiFi Congress. Michael Colligan and Greg Ehrich interviewed Professor Harald Haas on the podcast. They discussed on the history and development of light-based data transmission, and its current applications in the fields of autonomous automobiles, privacy and security, as well as defence.
Get A Grip On Lighting Podcasts are hosted by Michael Colligan and Greg Ehrich, who have over 30 years of combined experience in the lighting industry. Michael Colligan is an entrepreneur and inventor. He’s a subject matter expert in commercial and industrial lighting supply, lighting retrofits, and finding recycling streams for hard-to-recycle waste. Greg Ehrich, LC is the former President of the National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors (NAILD) and owner of a progressive lighting distributorship.
Below are some of the Podcast conversations. Some of the conversations have been edited by Chuks from LiFi Tech News:
Prof.Harald Haas: “The focus is about the division of LiFi. So, as you know, we've coined out in a TED Global talk in 2011. And I would call it sort of LiFi 2.0, which we are entering now. So, LiFi has headed now into the markets. We have seen it. It's in many pilots. And that is only the start, right of that revolution. And we will see LiFi 2.0 Coming soon. And we are preparing that next transition at the moment in our research labs.”
Michael Colligan: “Which applications right now bring earning revenue, like, where's LiFi being sold to people right now?”
Prof.Harald Haas: “I mean, the automotive industry, the automation industry, in Industry 4.0, where it's all about resilience to electromagnetic interference. It's about security. It's about privacy. And also defence. Defence is a very, very interesting market, as it's providing a very unique solution in that space.”
Greg Ehrich: “Did you coin the term? Or did you actually invent LiFi?”
Prof.Harald Haas: “So, basically, it was known as visible light communication using LEDs for point-to-point communication, but at very low rates. So, what we added is and say, Okay, we have a communication link. But we make it a networked communication system, a cellular communication system, with bi-directional communication, but also unlocking the full potential in terms of data rate. So, going sort of beyond the megabits into the gigabit region, and we've developed technologies that will allow us to move from a megabit per second to hundreds of gigabit per second. And that element of enabling high-speed communication, we called LiFi. That's what we contributed. So, light communication has been around for many, many years. And what people don't know is Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor, the father of the telephone, invented the photophone in 1883 i think, invented the photo phone before the telephone, even wanted to call a call is second daughter photophone. Sunlight, sunlight to communicate voice over 200 metre. So, using LEDs for data communication is old. It's very old. It is used in TV remote controls, it home uses infrared light, but the data rates are very low. And therefore it really couldn't take off only when you enable it to really compete, not to compete, but provide a similar data rate if used to with radio communications, then you can talk about LiFi.”
Prof.Harald Haas: “Yeah, I mean, it's is centred here. And I mean, we've been working here. I personally have been involved in LiFi for the last 16 years. So I'm a radio communications engineer also, I've worked with Siemens in the past, but I saw around 2003 that we are running out of steam in terms of radio spectrum. We don't have enough spectrum and then I went into lighting.”
Prof.Harald Haas: “I think the only way you can convey information with light is changing the intensity. But it's not only on off, right? It’s changing the intensity in a very subtle way. And that is the way to communicate and attack. The reason why we have these very high data rates is that we don't use the on-off key, but have a more advanced sophisticated modulation technique that we brought to the table which we spaced on what it's called OFDM, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing that we basically modified to make LiFi that high speed, and you're talking about gigabit and I started a research project in the UK, you're looking at with a terabit wireless communications using light.”
Michael Colligan: “So, let me just unpack this. I'm gonna light bulb salesman, I sell light bulbs every day. Well, I'm wondering when I'm going to be sitting down with a client saying, hey, why don't you change your network from WiFi to LiFi?”
Prof.Harald Haas: “I mean, this is a wonderful example. Because that industry isn't in the same state as the photography industry. You know, the old analogue photography, you had the film room? Sure. And for companies like Kodak sure if you went off because the business model changed. And we see a similar change. Now in the lighting industry, the lighting industry, the moment sales light bulbs, is lighting devices, right? Yes, sir. But with a lifetime of 20 years or more that business model changes. So, the only way to change your business model is to diversify to different services. So, LiFi is a platform that would allow diversification, because if you have LiFi in a light bulb, then you would have a computer inside, yes, you have memory inside, you have a processor inside and think about the iPhone and the smartphone. It is a platform that allows communication processing, computing, and memory. And the same components are now in the light bulb. Now, you can programme the light bulb.”
Michael Colligan: "The only innovation I can think of Dr Haas is scary. The only thing whenever I think of what can be done with LiFi is all around spying on people. It surrounds gathering information that you know, from people, and I don't see any major innovation. Like I sell lighting systems every day to people. And I can't think of a really strong argument as a sales rep for LiFi other than the security ones. Yes, I get that. But in terms of like where’s the innovation, I just think of spying and getting more information for people than they don't want to necessarily give up and we're already giving up too much information in some ways.”
Prof.Harald Haas: “I think the point that I want to make here is yeah, you enable new applications, right? You enable 8k TV, we enable 16k. TV, we enable 3d VR and AR. The reason why these glasses are so chunky is because of the rendering or the signal processing that happens in front of your eyes. Yes, you're not getting seasick, you need very low-latency links. Now imagine this light, basically, three metres above me is providing a gigabit data rate and I can have a thin client display in front of my eyes. And that thing there does all the processing and provides a gigabit multiple gigabit link that enables VR, AR and if you have VR, AR, you enable new ways of interacting with the environment, new ways of creating businesses. It is an enabler for new applications. You enable your fridges to communicate, you enable your washing machines, you enable your kettles, and you enable your devices to be connected to the Internet.”
Prof.Harald Haas: “It is. And this is part of my talk as well, as everybody talks about machine learning in AI, everything gets intelligent. Basically, the research is about replicating the brain. Yes. Now, what is the brain here at that location? If you take a brain and put it on a table? What does it do for you? Nothing. If you don't build a nervous system around the brain? Sure, it's meaningless. Yes. And then the biggest problem that we see that problem happening isn't data centres. At the moment, data centres can't be scaled, because of the amount of cables, the amount of connectivity limit sort of the scalability of the cable and all that stuff. So, that's a problem. But you see that already that you need to think about the nervous system if you want to really go into the fourth industrial revolution if you really want a society that is driving innovation, rather than piggybacking on other regions that have basically been able to scale up quicker, that you need to take this opportunity and move forward.”
Greg Ehrich: “So, you talked about some general industries that it would be successful. And is there one specific application or project you can point to where you guys have done it, and it's had great success, and it's still operating today?”
Prof.Harald Haas: “I mean, it's many, many pilots, around 130 pilots. In the classroom, for example, enabled teaching, where it’s secure, it is sort of high data rate, it is very reliable, that providing very, very sort of robust, reliable communication, if you talk about WiFi at the moment, it's there, but it's very immediate service, the quality of service is not guaranteed, it's very sort of depends where you are if you're behind a wall or not. But with the LiFi, you can guarantee a very sort of steady and robust delivery of the service and guarantee a gigabit or 10 gigabit and not hope that maybe you know, 10% of the time you get your gigabits, it's really delivering that sort of robustness of quality of service, as well as providing the higher data rates.”
Greg Ehrich: “Is it a classroom where all the students maybe have iPads or something?”
Prof.Harald Haas: “It's a classroom with eight lights with LiFi access points. These laptops have a dongle, and they have a robust link, and they can move and they can turn around. And it's handover. And it's providing very, very high-speed communication in that classroom. And what we also have seen is that because that classroom and the pupils there won't occupy WiFi, the neighbouring classrooms saw a surge in the data rates that use WiFi still, because of the offloads of traffic from WiFi to LiFi. And that's an effect you always see people say, are you competing with WiFi? No, we don't. LiFi play helps provide better WiFi because of less contention.”
Prof.Harald Haas: “You need to decode the ones and zeros. You need to have a detector. Your eye takes a signal. But then you need to decode the fluctuations and decoded them as data.”
Michael Colligan: “Any final predictions of the future make it crazy.”
Prof.Harald Haas: “I think we will have LiFi in everything around us, at every table, in every chair, in every mall, in every mirror in every shoe and in every piece of cloth within the next 10 years.”
Podcast Recording
You can also listen to the podcast in full at the following link:
Li-Fi Conference 2022
The Li-Fi Conference 2022 Edition was a great success. Li Fi Tech News will very soon write articles on the topics treated at the Conference.
What is LiFi?
LiFi, also known as "Light Fidelity" is a wireless optical networking technology, which uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to transmit data. In 2011, professor Harald Haas made a LiFi demonstration at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Global Talk on Visible Light Communication (VLC).
VLC uses light as a medium to deliver high-speed communication like Wi-Fi and complies with the IEEE standard IEEE 802.15.7. The IEEE 802.15.7 is a high-speed, bidirectional, and fully networked wireless communication technology-based standard similar to Wi-Fi's IEEE 802.11.
How does LiFi work?
LiFi is a high speed, bidirectional, and fully networked wireless communication of data using light. LiFi constitutes of several light bulbs that form a wireless network.
When an electrical current goes through to a LED light bulb, a stream of light (photons) emits from the lamp. LED bulbs are semiconductor devices, which means that the brightness of the light flowing through them can change at extremely high speeds. The signal is sent by modulating the light at different rates. The signal can then be received by a detector that interprets the changes in light intensity (the signal) as data. Also when the LED is ON, you transmit a digital 1, and when it is OFF, you transmit a 0.
LiFi Benefits
The primary benefits of LiFi are as follows:
• Security: Provides entirely secure access. Where there is no light there is no data.
• Safety: Does not produce electromagnetic radiation and does not interfere with existing electronic systems.
• Localisation: Allows localisation due to the small coverage area of LiFi access point - localisation can be used for very precise asset tracking.
• Data density: Provides ubiquitous high-speed wireless access that offers substantially greater data density (data rate per unit area) than RF through high bandwidth reuse.
Credit to Oledcomm
LiFi Applications
LiFi can be used for so many applications and the list is increasing every year. You can read our updated list of Li-Fi applications at the following link:
Credit to pureLiFi
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