Cisco: Li-Fi Can Reach Around Corners

Last month, LEDs Magazine noted that networking giant Cisco is now talking up Li-Fi. At the time, we did not report on the extent of the enthusiasm. So we thought we’d add this: The engineer behind the push is encouraged by a science that could overcome Li-Fi’s line-of-sight limitations.

Because Li-Fi remains a relatively lesser known technology, we offer our usual refresher: Li-Fi, or light fidelity, is a technology that uses modulated light waves from LEDs to transmit data. It is like Wi-Fi in that it provides wireless internet connections. But where Wi-Fi uses radio waves (RF), Li-Fi uses light. Lasers are waiting in the wings, according to technology proponents.

Since then, efforts to develop the technology seem to have picked up. Parello references a March 2022 paper published by IEEE detailing the technology’s potential. The paper’s authors include Harald Haas, who is regarded as the “father of Li-Fi.” Haas cofounded Li-Fi pioneer pureLiFi in 2012 and continues to serve as chief scientific officer, while also wearing many other hats. He is distinguished professor of mobile communications at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow; he is the director of the university’s LiFi Research and Development Centre; and he is an advisor to Santa Barbara, Calif.–based Kyocera SLD Laser (KSLD), helping the company to develop laser-based Li-Fi.

This detail could finally launch Li-Fi into the mainstream. The technology’s gestation period has been a long one, which has been hindered by a standards debate as well as by gadget makers’ reluctance to embed the technology into devices.