In terms of wireless networking standards, Wi-Fi 7 has recently dominated the headlines as new certified devices are now coming to the market offering massively increased speeds of up to 46 Gbps. And while this is indeed impressive, there is another less known technology that could ultimately play a significant role in enterprise connectivity in the future. This technology is light fidelity, or Li-Fi, which uses infrared light as opposed to radio signals to transmit data. Li-Fi offers some interesting features that could be useful to enterprise users, such as significantly faster speeds compared to the technologies available today and better security, but also has some significant drawbacks. Commercial activity around the technology has increased recently, and depending on how the ecosystem surrounding the technology develops, Li-Fi may soon emerge as an interesting connectivity option for enterprise users.
Li-Fi technology is a method of wireless data transmission that uses light waves, as opposed to most other wireless technologies, which use radio waves, in order to send information from one location to another. The technology is not a new concept, as research and development efforts have been ongoing since the early 2000s. However, considerable progress has been made in recent years, and in July 2023, Li-Fi was standardized by the IEEE under the designation of 802.11bb, which will greatly increase the prospects of the technology as this will facilitate economies of scale going forward.
As for the 802.11bb standard specifically, it specifies that the technology should operate using light in the near-infrared 800 to 1000 nm waveband. It also specifies that data transmission rates will be between 10 Mbit/s and 9.6 Gbit/s. While this is really the first formal step in the formalization of the standard and much work needs to be done, the 802.11b standard will now enable various players in the ecosystem to coordinate development efforts, which in turn should make Li-Fi more economically viable going forward.
In terms of what a Li-Fi deployment typically looks like, Li-Fi fixtures have small control units that bidirectionally transmit data from a solid-state light emitter, such as a lightbulb, to a photosensitive receiver. Therefore, end user devices need to be equipped with these sensors in order to receive a Li-Fi signal. This equipment is connected to the internet via a Local Area Network consisting of all the enabled access points in the network.