Technical Seminar Report

On

LI-FI TECHNOLOGY
Submitted to
Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad
In Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Award of Degree of

BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY
IN
COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

Submitted
By

K Bharath
(198R5A0509)

Under the Esteemed guidance of

Mrs.Y.Prathima
Professor, Department of CSE

Department of Computer Science & Engineering

CMR ENGINEERING COLLEGE

(Approved by AICTE, NEW DELHI, Affiliated to JNTU, Hyderabad)
Kandlakoya, Medchal Road, R.R. Dist. Hyderabad-501 401
2020-2021
 CMR ENGINEERING COLLEGE
(Accredited by NBA, Approved by AICTE NEW DELHI, Affiliated to JNTU, Hyderabad)

Kandlakoya, Medchal Road, Hyderabad-501 401

Department of Computer Science & Engineering

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the seminar entitled “LI-FI TECHNOLOGY” is a bonafide

work carried out by

K.Bharath 198R5A0509
In partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the degree of BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY
in COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING from CMR Engineering College, affiliated to JNTU,
Hyderabad, under our guidance and supervision. The results presented in this seminar have been verified
and are found to be satisfactory. The results embodied in this seminar have not been submitted to any other
university for the award of any other degree or diploma.

Internal Guide Seminar Coordinator Head of the

Department
Mrs.Y.Prathima Mrs. K.Mamatha Dr. Sheo Kumar
Professor Assistant Professor Prof & H.O.D
Department of CSE Department of CSE Department of CSE
CMREC, Hyderabad CMREC, Hyderabad CMREC, Hyderabad.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We are extremely grateful to Dr. A. Srinivasula Reddy, Principal and Dr.Sheo Kumar, HOD,
Department of CSE, CMR Engineering College for their constant support.

I am extremely thankful to Mrs.Y.Prathima, Professor, Internal Guide, Department of CSE, for her
constant guidance, encouragement and moral support throughout the project.

I will be failing in duty if I do not acknowledge with grateful thanks to the authors of the references and
other literatures referred in this Project. I express my thanks to all staff members and friends for all the
help and co-ordination extended in bringing out this Project successfully in time.

Finally, I am very much thankful to my parents who guided me for every step.

Date: K Bharath
Place: Hyderabad (198R5A0509)
 INDEX
Introduction
LIFI Technology
1.Parts of LIFI
2.What is LI-FI
3.History
4.Working Principle
5.Advantages
I. Efficiency
II. Capacity
III. Safety
IV. Security
6.Advantages of LIFI over WIFI
6.1 Comparision between LIFI and WIFI
6.2 Comparision between current & future
Wireless technologies
7.Applications of LI-FI
7.1 Underwater Communications
7.2 Traffic Management
7.3 Airways
7.4 Blind Indoor Navigation System
7.5 In areas or in hazardous environment
Sensing
7.6 Disaster Management
8. Implemented Systems
I. pure LiFiTM Company
a. Li-1st
b. Li-Flame
II. UP-VLC Project
9. Fujitsu Laboratories Working
10. Challenges for LI-FI
11. What is the Problem?
12. Visible Light communication
12.1 Defination
12.2 Components
13. Conclusion
LIFI Technology
It is often frustrating when the slow speed of network leads to limited connectivity and
long processing hours while using wireless internet either at home network or coffee
shop or airport or competing for bandwidth at a conference. As more and more users
are tapped in with their devices, the clogged airwaves make it difficult to latch on a
reliable signal. What if we can use waves other than Radio waves to surf the internet?
Radio wave seems to be fully exploited and other spectrum needed to be explored. In
this direction, Dr Harold Haas, a German physicist proposed an idea called “Data
through Illumination” in which he used fiber optics to send data through LED light bulb.
The idea is similar as of infrared remote controls but far more powerful. D-Light can
produce data rates faster than 10 mega bits per second, which is far quicker than
average broadband connection. Hence a future can be envisioned having light as
transmitting medium to our laptops, smart phones and tablets. And security would be a
snap- if you can’t see the light, you can’t access the data.

Introduction
Li-Fi is a VLC, visible light communication technology, developed by the team of
scientists including professor Haas at the University of Edinburg and deals with
transfer of data through illumination by taking fiber out of optics by sending data
through a LED light bulb that varies in the intensity faster than a human eye can 1688
Dinesh Khandal, Sakshi Jain follow. Dr Haas amazed people by streaming HD video
from a standard LED lamp, at TED Global in July 2011 and thereby coined the term Li-
Fi. Li-Fi is now part of visible light communication (VLC) PAN IEEE 802.15.7 standard.
It can be very easily explained as, if the LED is ON, you are transmitting the data
means you transmit a digital 1 ; and if the LED is OFF you transmit a digital 0,or null,
or simply no data transfer happens. As one can switch them on and off very frequently
one can transmit data easily because the LEDs intensity is modulated so rapidly that
human eye cannot notice, so the output in form of light appears constant and hence
offering permanent connectivity. More sophistication in the transmission techniques
can further increase the data rates through VLC. Till now it was implemented through
white LED bulbs only but teams at the University of Oxford and the University of
Edinburgh are focusing on parallel data transmission by using multiple LEDs or array
of LEDs, where each LED transmits a different stream of data. Mixtures of red, blue,
green LEDs are also used by some groups to encode different data channels by
altering the light frequencies. In simple terms we can consider it to be a light based
Wi-Fi which has achieved blistering high speed in the labs at Heinrich Hertz institute in
Berlin, Germany of around 500 megabytes per second using a standard white-light
LED. So quiet obviously, modems would be replaced by transceiver fitted LED lamps
which can serve both in purposes of lightening the room as well as transmitting the
data. The technology uses a part of an electromagnetic spectrum and was
demonstrated at 2012 consumer electronics show in Las Vegas whereby a pair of
Cisco smart phone was used to exchange data using light of varying intensity from
their screens.

1.Parts of the LIFI

1- High brightness Light-Emittting Diodes(LEDs) or any light sources,which acts as a

transmitter.
2- A silicon photodiodenhas the roll of a detector and it shows a good response to
visible wavelength.
3- Communication channel is air or fibre optics.
2.What is Li-Fi?

Li-Fi is a new technology for short range wireless communication system; which is
suitable for data transmission via LEDs by illumination. It uses the visible light, a part
of the electromagnetic spectrum that is still not greatly utilized, instead of RF part. [9]
Professor Harald Haas, the original founder of Li-Fi technology, in his Technology
Entertainment Design
(TED) global talk on Li-Fi says: “At the heart of this technology is a new generation of
high brightness LEDs”, he also explains “Very simply, if the LED is on, you transmit a
digital 1, if it‟s off you transmit a 0, they can be switched on and off very quickly,
which gives nice opportunities for transmitted data.” It is possible to encode data in
the light by varying the rate at which the LEDs flicker on and off to give different
strings of 1s and 0s. Figure 4 illustrates the idea of data transmission using light. The
LED intensity is modulated so rapidly that the human eye cannot notice, so the
output appears constant; also more sophisticated techniques could dramatically
increase Li-Fi data rates such as using array of LEDs, where each LED transmits a
different data stream, to provide parallel data transmission. Other ideas are using
mixtures of red, green and blue LEDs to alter the light frequency encoding a different
data channel. In the next paragraphs, we will talk about the history of the technology,
its working principle and its various advantages.
3.History
The term was first used by Professor Harald Haas from University of
Edinburgh, United Kingdom, in his TED global talk in 2011. Li-Fi idea rates as
“one of 50 best inventions of 2011” on TED world site on the internet.

The first project which explains the idea of Li-Fi was The D-Light project. It was
funded from January 2010 to January 2012 at Edinburgh's Institute for Digital
Communications by Professor Haas; we will explain this project in the next
paragraph.
Here we show the history of Li-Fi:
 2011, Haas promoted this technology in TED global talk and helped start
a company to market it.
 October 2011, companies and industry groups formed the Li-Fi
consortium, to promote high-speed optical wireless systems and to
overcome the limited amount of radio-based wireless spectrum available
by exploiting a completely different part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

 2012, VLC technology exhibited by using Li-Fi Consortium.

 October 2013, Chinese manufacturers work on Li-Fi development kits.
 April 2014, the Russian company Stins Coman announced the
development of a Li-Fi wireless local network called BeamCaster.
Their current module transfers data at 1.25 Gbps. Although users
initially ‘feel’ the image on their tongue, with practice the signals
activate the ‘visual’ parts of the brain for some people.
 In any case, within 15 minutes of using the device, blind people can
begin interpreting spatial information via the BrainPort.
4.Working Principle

Li-Fi technology is implemented using white LED light bulbs used for illumination by
applying a constant current. However, by fast variations of the current, the light
output can be made to vary at extremely high speeds. If the LED is on, it transmits a
digital 1otherwise it transmits a digital 0. The LEDs can be switched on and off
quickly to transmit data that can‟t be detected by a human eye. [2]
So what we need at all for sending data are some LEDs and a controller that cods
data into those LEDs and for receiving data, we need an Image Sensor, Photodiode
which is used as a detector, these components are shown in Figure 5.

The main component of Li-Fi system: LEDs, Photodiode and Image sensor.

The LED bulb will hold a micro-chip that will do the job of processing the data. The
light intensity can be manipulated to send data by tiny changes in amplitude.
Figure 6 shows the working principle of Li-Fi system, for data transmission; it can be
done by single LED or multi LED. On the receiver side there is a photo detector,
which convert this light into electric signals and it will give the electric signals to the
device connected to it. Voltage regulator and level shifter circuits are used on both
sides to convert or maintain a voltage level between transmitter and receiver.
The working principle of the Li-Fi
5.Advantages
Li-Fi is ideal for high density wireless data coverage in confined area and for reducing
radio interference issues. Its features include benefits to the capacity, energy
efficiency, safety and security of a wireless system; now, we will talk briefly about
each one of these advantages.

I. Efficiency

The efficiency of each radio station is just 5%due to the fact that most of the energy
is used for the cooling system in base of the radio station. Li-Fi is highly efficient
because LED consumes less energy. It is effective in terms of low cost, low required
energy and for various Environments. In this topic there are some main and
important points:
 Low cost: Requires fewer components than radio technology, due to the
cheap price of the LEDs and Digital components compared with the
microwave equipment.
 Energy: LED illumination is already efficient and the data transmission does
not requires, additional power because most energy dissipation in LEDs
requires little amount of energy.
 Environment: RF transmission and propagation in water is extremely difficult
but Li-Fi works well in this environment.

II. Capacity

Any lighting devices like car lights, ceiling lights, street lamps, etc. are used as a
hotspot. It means that any light spread internet using VLC which helps us to lower
cost architecture for a hotspot. The most important issues here are Bandwidth, Data
density and speed.
 Bandwidth: The visible light spectrum more abundant 10,000 times compared
with the RF spectrum..
 Data density: Li-Fi can achieve about 1000 times the data density of Wi-Fi
because visible light can be well contained in a tight illumination area,
whereas RF tends to spread out and cause interference.
  High speed, Very high data rates can be achieved as high as 500mbps or
30GB per minute due to the low interference, high device bandwidths and high
intensity optical output.

III. Safety

Light is all around us – it is a natural part of life – and as such there are no health
concerns associated with its use as a communications medium. It never gives any
side effects on any living thing like radio waves and other communication waves
which can dangerously interfere with electronic circuits and have effects on birds and
humans.

IV. Security

“If you can’t see the light, you can’t access the data!”

Because of the signal will not travel through walls, it is difficult to eavesdrop on Li-Fi
signals. You can also see where the data is going, so there is no need for additional
security such as pairing for RF interconnections like
Bluetooth.
6.ADVANTAGES OF LI-FI OVER WI-FI

High speed connectivity of the rate of 500mbps.

• Li- Fi uses light rather than radio frequency signals so are intolerant to
disturbances.

• VLC could be used safely in aircraft without affecting airlines signals.

• Integrated into medical devices and in hospitals as this technology

doesn’t deal with radio waves, so it can easily be used in all such places
where Bluetooth, infrared, Wi-Fi and internet are broadly in use.

• Under water in sea Wi-Fi does not work at all but light can be used and
hence undersea explorations are good to go now with much ease.

• There are billions of bulbs worldwide which just need to be replaced with
LED’s to transmit data.

• Security is a side benefit of using light for data transfer as it does not
penetrate through walls.

• On highways for traffic control applications like where Cars can have
LED based headlights, LED based backlights, and they can
communicate with each other and prevent accidents.

• Using this Technology worldwide every street lamp would be a free data
access point.

• The issues of the shortage of radio frequency bandwidth may be sorted

out by Li-Fi.
6.1 COMPARISON BETWEEN LI-FI AND WI-FI

LI-FI as discussed, is a term used to describe visible light communication technology

applied to high speed wireless communication. It acquired this name due to the
similarity to WI-FI, only using light instead of radio. WI-FI is great for general wireless
coverage within buildings and LI-FI is ideal for high density wireless data coverage in
confined area and for relieving radio interference issues, so the two technologies can
be considered complimentary.
Table 1 also contains the current wireless technologies that can be used for
transferring data between devices today i.e. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and IrDA. Only Wi-Fi
currently offers very high data rates. The IEEE 802.11n in most implementations
provides up to 150Mbit/s (in theory the standard can go to 600Mbit/s) although in
practice you receive considerably less than this. Note that one out of three of these is
an optical technology .
technology Bandwidth Speed Data Rang Security Power ecological Cost
Expansion Density available impact

Wi-Fi Limited 150 Low medium Good Low medium medium

Mbps (medium)
Li-Fi Exceptional >10 High Low Excellent High Low Low
Technology
Gbps Speed Data density
(High)
Wireless(current)
6.2
Wi-Fi-IEEE 802.11n 150 Mbps *
Bluetooth 3 Mbps *
IRDA 4 Mbps ***
Wireless(future)

WiGig 2Gbps **
Giga-IR 1Gbps ***
Li-Fi >1Gbps ****
COMPARISON BETWEEN CURRENT & FUTURE
WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES

Table 1: comparison between Li-Fi and Wi-Fi

7.Applications of Li-Fi
Due to its advantages, Li-Fi has a lot of Life applications. Here we will talk about some
important applications of it.

7.1 Underwater Communications

Using RF signals is impractical due to strong signal absorption in water. Li-Fi
provides a solution for shortrange communications. Submarines could use their
headlamps to communicate with each other, process data autonomously and send
their findings periodically back to the surface in Underwater Remotely Operated
Vehicles (ROV). Another important issue is that Li-Fi can even work underwater
where Wi-Fi fails completely, thereby it‟s open for military operations. [16]
Figure 8 shows water vehicles which use light to communicate with each other and
transfer data between them.

Figure 8: Optical Underwater Communications system.

7.2 Traffic Management

Li-Fi can help in managing the traffic in a better manner and the accident numbers can be
decreased. Traffic lights can communicate to the car and with each other to manage the traffic
in the street.
Traffic light can play the role of the sender of the data to provide information to the car on the
status of the road or about the situation of other cars as shown in Figure 9. Also cars can
communicate with each other and prevent accidents by exchanging information. For example,
LED car lights can alert drivers when other vehicles are too close.
 Figure 9: Vehicle Visible Light Communications.

c. Airways
We have to switch off mobiles in aircrafts to prevent overlapping of mobile phone signals
with navigation and control signals used by aircraft. Li-Fi can be safely used on planes
because it doesn't interfere with RF. [15] Since it Data is present where light is present, we
can use the lights above the seats in the plane as hotspot. [12]

d. Medical Applications
One of the most important features of Li-Fi is that it could be used in hospitals and medical
settings that require the lack of RF signals which affect the medical equipment. For example,
OTs (Operation theatres) do not allow using Wi-Fi due to radiation concerns because usage of
Wi-Fi blocks the signals for monitoring equipment‟s. So, it may be dangerous to the patient's
health.

e. Blind Indoor Navigation System

Indoor navigation is convenient for everyone, and it is especially indispensable for the
visually impaired. We proposed such a navigation system for the visually impaired as shown
in Figure 10. LED lights emit visible light with location data and an embedded system or
smartphone with a visible light receiver which receives the data. The embedded system or
smartphone calculates the optimal path to a designation and speaks to the visually impaired
through a headphone.
 Figure 10: Indoor Navigation system for Blind people.

f. In Areas or in Hazardous Environments Sensitive

Li-Fi provides a safe communication in environments such as mines and petrochemical plants,
because it doesn‟t cause electromagnetic interference which appears in RF communications.
Li-Fi can also be used in petroleum or chemical plants where other frequencies could be
hazardous.
For example, power plants like nuclear power plants require grid integrity and monitoring of
the station temperature that need fast, inter-connected data systems. Wi-Fi and many other
radiation types are bad for sensitive areas surrounding the power plants. Li-Fi could offer
safe, abundant connectivity for all areas of these sensitive locations.
Moreover this technology also enables us to control plants and their growth without direct
presence.

g. Disaster Management
Li-Fi can be used as a powerful means of communication at times of disaster such as
earthquake or hurricanes, for example places like subway stations and tunnels which are
common dead zones for most emergency communications, don‟t pose obstruction for Li-Fi,
so it can be used there, as emergency communication.
8.Implemented Systems
There is a number of implemented systems and projects which uses Li-Fi technology and
provides reliable and new applications and uses for this technology. Some of these are:

I. pureLiFi™ Company
PureLiFi, the home of Li-Fi, is recognised as the leader in the field – the usage of the visible
light spectrum instead of radio frequencies to enable wireless data communication. PureLiFi
provides high-speed wireless access that offers substantially greater security, safety and data
densities than Wi-Fi along with inherent properties that eliminate unwanted external network
intrusion. In addition, the integration of illumination and data services generates a measurable
reduction in both infrastructure complexity and energy consumption.
The management Team of this company say: “At pureLiFi, we aim to address and optimally
exploit the opportunities presented by this disruptive technology in conjunction with our Li-Fi
ecosystem partners.” Some Products of this company:

a. Li-1st
The Li-1st provides the first major opportunity for customers to rapidly develop and test
VLC applications for cost-effective, high-speed data communication solutions that utilize
commercial LED infrastructures. In Figure 11 we show the working principle diagram of
this project.

Figure 11: Li-1st working diagram.

The product offers full duplex communication with a capacity of 5Mbps in both the
downlink and uplink over a range of up to three metres, while simultaneously providing
 ample desk space illumination. The distance achieved by the system depends only on the
strength of the light source, i.e., the LED light. Li-1st offers a simple plug-and-play
solution for secure wireless point-to-point Internet access with a wide range of LED
luminaires working seamlessly with large 600×600 panels, as well as T5 replacement
LED tubes or downlighters. Actually, the Li-1st is a largely LED luminaire agnostic,
providing a diverse tool for deploying and exploiting the shifting, services based, business
model of the lighting industry. The system has been available on limited release since
January 2014.

b. Li-Flame
The Li-Flame is the next generation of the world‟s first high-speed wireless network
solution using VLC. Li-Flame delivers:

• An extensive range of wireless communication applications including and beyond

existing Wi-Fi.
• A cost-effective delivery of light and data via a single infrastructure.
• More flexible construction environments with the elimination of communication
cabling.
The Li-Flame was publicly demonstrated at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on 2 –
5 March at the Scottish Development International stand.
The main products for this project are:
 Li-Flame Ceiling Unit (CU)

It has some main advantages which is Data and power via standard Ethernet port,
Simple installation, Multiple access; and Handover control enables seamless
switching between Access points (APs).
 Li-Flame Desktop Unit (DU):

This device also has some excellent advantages, Connects to client device via
USB, 10Mbps infrared uplink to ceiling unit, Handover allowing user to move
from one AP to the next without losing the high-speed data connection,
Transceiver swivel head can be adjusted by user to optimise the connection; and
Battery-powered and portable.
II. UP-VLC Project
Ultra-parallel visible light communications or (UP-VLC) project is a partnership between 6
research groups at 5 institutions. It is led by Professor M.D. Dawson of the University of
Strathclyde and mentored by Professor P. Blood of Cardiff University. Some of the relevant
technical expertise and background accomplishments brought by the partners of this project
are illustrated in Figure 12.

Figure 12: Some of the relevant technical expertise and background accomplishments.
In Figure 12:
(a) high-fill-factor chequerboard (square grid) GaN LED/CMOS clusters
(Strathclyde/Edinburgh),
(b) 1Gb/s eye diagram from 84μm-diameter GaN micro-pixel LED (Strathclyde), (c) flexible
organic semiconductor grating arrays for hybrid LEDs (Strathclyde/St. Andrews), (d) multiple
channel VLC link (Oxford), (e) 124Mb/s real time video VLC transmission demonstration
(Edinburgh).
The project Running from October 2012 to September 2016, UP-VLC is an ambitious
EPSRC-funded £4.6 million Programme Grant which will explore the transformative
technology of communications in an imaginative and foresighted way. The vision is built on
the unique capabilities of gallium nitride (GaN) optoelectronics to combine optical
communications with lighting functions and especially on the capability to implement new
forms of spatial multiplexing, where individual elements in high-density arrays of GaN based
LEDs provide independent communications channels, but can combine as displays. The
engineers who work on this project say: “We envisage ultra-high data density - potentially
Tb/s/mm2 - arrays of LEDs driven via CMOS control electronics in novel addressing and
encoding schemes and in compact and versatile forms".
Recently, by integrating CMOS electronics with GaN based micro-LEDs, they have
developed CMOScontrolled color-tunable smart displays. The color-tunable LED pixels in
these displays have a modulation bandwidth of 100 MHz, thus providing simultaneously a
wavelength-agile source for high-speed visible light communications. The programmable
dynamic images generated from such a micro-display system are shown below (red „Tetris‟
and green Firework).

9.Fujitsu Laboratories Working

Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a technology that modulates the colour of light
emitted by LED lights in such a way as to be undetectable to the human eye, but that
can still embed ID data in the light that is cast on an object.
We will talk about two basic concepts: the first one is Key features of this technology
and the second is Reflectance compensation.

The key feature of this technology is that information could be embedded using colour
modulations. For more clarification, we know that colour LEDs combine the three
lights of red, green, and blue (RGB) to produce a range of colours. By modulating the
intensity of the light emitted by each of the three component colours along the time
axis, ID data can be embedded in the light cast onto an object, even with very small
variations. Data for one ID is attached to each individual LED light. Figure 13 shows
transmit and receive data with colour modulation.
 Figure 13: Colour modulation is used to express and receive data.
When light is cast onto a surface, some of it will be absorbed and some reflected,
depending on the reflectivity of that surface. The signal encoded in the respective RGB
wavelengths will wind up being weakened by that partial absorption, and since this
technology uses an image captured by a camera to measure the reflectivity and
compensate accordingly, information-capturing accuracy has been improved, this issue
is called reflectance compensation. Figure 14 show that reflectance compensation
improves accuracy in demodulation process.

Figure 14: Reflectance compensation improves accuracy.

10.Challenges for Li-Fi

Apart from many advantages over Li-Fi, this technology is facing some
problems such as Li-Fi requires line of sight (LOS) and receiving device would
not be shift in indoors. A major challenge is how the receiving device will
transmit data back to transmitter. Another important issue is interference from
external light sources like sun light, normal bulbs; opaque materials in the path
of transmission will cause interruption in the communication. Another
disadvantage is that Li-Fi doesn‟t work in the dark or light can‟t pass through
objects, so if the receiver is inadvertently blocked in any way, then the signal
will immediately cut out. And the signal is
easily blocked by somebody simply walking in front of the LED source.
11.What is the Problem?

Despite continuous improvements in wireless communication systems, e.g. 3G, 4G,

etc.., a coming crisis is expected due to the lack of sufficient Radio Frequency (RF)
resources, this limitation in bandwidth can‟t support the growth in demand for high
data rates and the large numbers of communication systems, as shown in Figure 1,
within the bandwidths between 300 kHz and 4 GHz. That‟s known as “Spectrum
Crunch”.
Although, spectrum congestion decreases when we use high frequencies to transfer
data, but this not a practice solution, because this part of spectrum requires complex
equipment and causes high cost systems.

Figure 15: Multiple communication systems cause Spectrum Crunch.

So how can we solve this problem?

Actually, there are numbers of technologies that provide realistic and applicable
solutions to this issue. One of them is the “Cognitive Radio”. It is a new sort of
wireless communication with a transceiver architecture that can intelligently
detect which communication channels are in use and which are not, and
instantly move into empty channels to use them to transmit data. Another
solution is the transmission of data using visible light illumination which use
very high frequency. In general, this technology known as Visible Light
Communication
(VLC).
There are also many brilliant and efficient solutions, in this seminar we will
focus on Light Fidelity (Li-Fi) technology, which is based on VLC.

12.Visible Light Communication

Definition
VLC is an optical communication technology that use visible light rays, these
rays locate between [400-800] THz, as optical carrier for data transmission by
illumination. It uses fast pulses of light, which cannot be detected by the human
eye, to transmit data. It includes any use of the visible light portion of the
electromagnetic spectrum to transmit information. The VLC standardization
process is conducted within IEEE wireless personal area networks working
group (802.15).
One of VLC‟s features is providing wide bandwidth as illustrated in Figure 2.
We can obviously see that usage the optical portion of spectrum guarantees
about 10,000 times greater bandwidth compares to the usage of the RF
frequencies.

Figure 16: Location of visible light and RF frequencies at electromagnetic spectrum.

Components
As we see in the previous paragraph, VLC is a communication system which consists
of a transmitter, a receiver and a communication channel. The main components of
VLC systems are:

• High brightness Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs) or any light sources, which

acts as transmitter.
• A silicon photodiode has the roll of a detector and it shows a good response
to visible wavelength.  Communication channel is air or fibre optics.
Usually, we add to these components some necessary circuits like a driving circuit and
a receiving circuit. The driving circuit consists of a control circuit and output stage to
modify the data and make it ready to be sent and the receiving circuit consists of a
filter to select the required band, amplification stage to provide the required Signal to
Noise ratio in order to demodulate the signal. We show a block diagram of VLC
system in Figure 3.

Figure 17: Block diagram of the VLC system.

13.CONCLUSION

Possibilities for future utilization are abundant. Every light bulb can be
converted into li-fi signal receptor to transfer data and we could proceed
toward the cleaner, safer, greener and brighter future. As we know that
the airways are getting clogged day by day Li-fi can offer a genuine and
very efficient alternative. Li-Fi is enabled by advanced digital transmission
technologies. Optical cell networks based on Li-Fi are the link between
future energy efficient illumination and cellular communications. They can
also harness unregulated, unused and vast amount of electromagnetic
spectrum and can even enable ever smaller cells without the need for
new infrastructure.
The issues of shortage of radio frequency can be tackled easily with only
limitation being that it works in direct line of sight of light. There are no
dead ends to technology and science. Now both light and radio waves
can be used simultaneously to transfer data and signals.