PureLiFi has demonstrated the world’s first LiFi ecosystem for the consumer market at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The ‘LiFi@Home’ demonstration featured a range of LiFi connected systems, including a consumer style downlighter, a smartphone, a smart TV and an AR Headset.
The ecosystem is powered by an easy to install power line communication network backhaul that uses existing electrical cabling to connect everything to the internet.
LiFi is a wireless technology that uses light rather than radio frequencies to transmit data.
By harnessing the light spectrum, LiFi can offer faster, more reliable wireless communications with unparalleled security, compared to conventional technologies such as WiFi and 5G.
According to PureLiFi, these traditional wireless technologies suffer from growing congestion and interference that erode customer experience. In addition, using analysis from Deloitte, the firm shared how the number of connected devices in the average US home more than doubled in the past two years. As more devices connect to struggling home WiFi networks, bandwidth is split, interference increases and response times slow.
A report produced by the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that only about 70 per cent of the global demand for digital connections leading up to 2030 will be satisfied by existing radio frequency and related technologies, even with advancements such as 5G and WiFi 6.
'The door is open for LiFi to fill the gap,’ remarked PureLiFi CEO, Alistair Banham. ‘LiFi is key to unlocking the next generation of connected experiences in an ecosystem where WiFi and 5G alone are not enough. What we’ve demonstrated here for the first time is how simple it is to bring LiFi into consumer environments. We’ve done all the hard work to make LiFi easy to integrate and simple to get started.'
Adding LiFi to a home will not only accommodate the growing demand for connected devices, it will also improve the user experience, PureLiFi explained in its announcement of the new ecosystem. ‘The technology enables more reliable connectivity that significantly improves latency and jitter and does not divide bandwidth,’ the firm said. ‘Next-generation experiences such as the metaverse and 8K streaming will be possible for everyone.’
PureLiFi’s consumer-ready LiFi products are enabled by light antennas that are compatible with the same WiFi basebands already present in billions of connected devices, allowing for easy integration of the technology.
The new ecosystem follows multiple successful large-scale deployments of LiFi with the US Army to provide more reliable and secure mission critical communications. With the addition of LiFi@Home to PureLiFi’s offering, this follows the previous pattern of taking proven technology from the defence sector into the hands of the consumer.
