Press the light switch – and the data flows. This is not science fiction, but an inventor’s idea. It could be an alternative to WiFi based on light: the LiFi.
The European Inventor Award is something like the Oscar or the Nobel Prize for engineers. It will be awarded in Valencia on July 4th. Harald Haas, who grew up in Trautskirchen near Neustadt an der Aisch in Bavaria, holds a chair in mobile communication at the University of Edinburgh and has been nominated for the award. He has developed a faster alternative to W-Lan. His invention, LiFi, is based on light.
LED enables a high data rate
Data transfer with light: This is made possible by a slightly modified LED lamp. Haas has been working on this for more than 20 years. This vision has now become reality. He created an alternative to W-LAN: Light Fidelity or LiFi.
Light Fidelity uses light waves to transmit data rather than radio waves, Haas explains. “The bandwidth offered by the light is three thousand times greater than the entire radio spectrum. And the bandwidth is not subject to any regulations either,” explains the researcher. This is in contrast to radio-based mobile data networks. Licenses do not have to be paid for either. “An infinite resource that we want to use to be able to communicate with our smartphones, with our virtual reality headsets, with our 3D glasses,” enthuses Haas.
Haas has been researching the technology for years.
Height data security at LiFi
A small module for sending and receiving makes this possible. It is now so small that it fits into any electronic device – it is only five by ten millimeters in size. This invention could revolutionize wireless communication.
The technology is not yet widespread, but it is already being tested and valued in the military sector – and Haas is sure that it is also of interest to commercial companies. “LiFi is blocked by walls, is blocked by ceilings, and this creates increased security.
Inventor wants to convince smartphone manufacturers
Haas took his first steps as a scientist in Nuremberg at the Ohm University, then went to the International University of Bremen and then to Edinburgh as a professor for mobile communication. He is also supervising a Humboldt research project at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
Haas has been in Scotland so long that he speaks German with a slight accent. He has now been nominated for the European Inventor Award for the development and patents for LiFi. And he hopes that this attention will help him in negotiations with potential users. Cell phone providers in particular are crucial for future success.
Solution for high data transfer?
“Hopefully the innovators in the mobile and smartphone space that we are talking to at the moment will integrate this into their phones. This is an important step,” explains Haas. He expects the first LiFi-enabled smartphones to hit the market in two to three years. “Instead of a third or fourth camera, that would be a real innovation,” emphasizes the developer.
His hope is not unrealistic – radio wave technology such as 4G and 5G in particular is reaching its limits in mobile data transmission. The aim of modern technology is to transport as much data as possible as quickly as possible. And so the scientist could make a decisive contribution to the mobile data world of the future – and receive one of the most important European prizes for it.