pureLiFi, the light communications technology company, has produced the world’s first Li-Fi network by turning off-the-shelf LED light fixtures into wireless access points. The company has produced all the necessary components for the “atto-cellular” communication system that can serve multiple mobile users at the same time (multi-user access), allowing them to move around inside a room or premises while seamlessly connecting to the best serving light bulb (also termed “handover”).
This groundbreaking development marks the first step to achieving up to 1000x higher capacity per area than traditional Wi-Fi systems. Featuring pureLiFi’s unique light-based cellular technology and operating in non-line-of-sight, the company’s latest breakthrough has the potential to revolutionise the next wave of mobile communication systems, 5G, and be instrumental in accelerating the Internet of Things - a single indicator light in a home appliance can now be turned into a wireless access point.
Li-Flame is set for shipping to industry customers during Q4 of 2014. The product is the next generation of the world’s first ubiquitous high-speed, bidirectional wireless solution, Li-1st, that uses visible light communication (VLC) to transmit data. The latest innovation by the ‘father of Li-Fi’, Harald Haas and his team, Li-Flame is the first product that elevates VLC from a point-to-point transmission technology to a full wireless networking solution.
The Li-Flame Ceiling Unit connects to an LED light fixture to form an atto-cell, providing communication in that fixture’s illuminated area. The Li-Flame system is unique in that it covers a wide area with multiple ceiling unit access points. The system operates in conjunction with the Li-Flame mobile transceiver unit, which features an infrared uplink and connects via a standard USB to the host device to allow full mobility.
Li-Flame technology delivers data densities substantially greater than state-of-the-art Wi-Fi and its inherent security advantages eliminate unwanted external network intrusion. In addition, the merger of lighting with wireless communications provides a measurable reduction in both infrastructure complexity and energy consumption. pureLiFi released the world’s first commercial Li-Fi product, Li-1st, during Q1 of 2014 and is at the forefront of research and commercialisation into Li-Fi, an industry expected to grow to over US $9 billion by 2020¹.
Harald Haas, Chief Science Officer (CSO) and co-founder of pureLiFi, said: “Worldwide industry demand for this product shows that Li-Fi is viewed as a transformative technology that can change the way we use the mobile internet and be an enabler of the emerging Internet of Things.”
1. Visible Light Communications(VLC)/Light Fidelity (Li-Fi) and Free Space Optics (FSO) Market report by MarketsAndMarkets, July 2014.
2. Li-Fi - a term coined by pureLiFi’s CSO, Professor Haas – is a technology based on VLC that provides full networking capabilities similar to Wi-Fi but with significantly greater spatial reuse of bandwidth.
3. pureLiFi (formerly known as pureVLC) is a light communications technology company formed in 2012 as a spin-out from the University of Edinburgh to create OEM components, including Li-Fi drivers and receivers.
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