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Li-Fi, or light fidelity, technology is a fast-growing option for wireless data transfer within buildings. But with this category rapidly approaching maturity, attention is turning to what the future will hold for this category of connectivity, particularly when it comes to whether it can be a viable replacement for existing Wi-Fi services.
Some in the industry have suggested that Li-Fi could completely replace Wi-Fi in the next decade. Speaking to Estates Gazette last year, for instance, boss at certification firm Wired Score Wiliam Newton said: "I expect in ten years’ time, we will have no Wi-Fi and all of the internet we get to our laptops in a building will come from all of the light bulbs in the building, beaming internet 1,000 times faster than on Wi-Fi."
But is this just wishful thinking for those involved in the industry? Perhaps a more likely scenario is that Wi-Fi and Li-Fi will find a way to coexist, as each technology has its own set of pros and cons, and despite Wi-Fi's ubiquity, there are still a range of scenarios where deploying the technology is challenging.
As a result, there's no reason why Wi-Fi and Li-Fi can't be seen as complementary rather than competitive. Therefore, effective systems may well look to deploy both options in certain scenarios in order to get the best of both worlds.
The potential offered by Li-Fi
Sceptics of Li-Fi often point to one of the technology's inherent features - the fact it depends on visible light to deliver data - as a negative. After all, light can't penetrate walls, which may therefore limit its effectiveness in many locations. This requires users to think carefully about how they deploy Li-Fi, as they will have to install the necessary LEDs in every room they want their signal to reach.
However, this weakness can also be viewed as a strength in certain situations, particularly when it comes to security. Unlike Wi-Fi, which may be susceptible to hackers sitting on the edge of the network, often beyond a company's physical perimeter, with Li-Fi a user would have to be physically present in the room to access the network.
Therefore, for use in especially sensitive environments, Li-Fi could alleviate a lot of headaches for IT security pros. In addition to this, the speed promises of Li-Fi could mean that for scenarios where the highest levels of performance are required, Li-Fi becomes the preferred option.
Where could Li-Fi take the lead?
Another potentially useful advantage of Li-Fi for more niche deployments is that it offers a much better ability to transmit through water, which could be useful in a range of industrial, military and Internet of Things applications, offering a more cost-effective solution for transmitting and receiving data in these environments.
Elsewhere, the aviation sector has been highlighted as another significant market for Li-Fi. It is particularly well-suited for use in spaces such as airline cabins, as range and line of sight limitations will not be an issue, while the use of the visible light spectrum means there's no risk of interference with sensitive flight instruments.
What's more, because it offers a much wider bandwidth compared with Wi-Fi, it means many people can connect at once without the problem of congestion arising.
Such advantages mean the technology could also easily find a home in other areas where there is a need to quickly connect large numbers of people within relatively confined spaces, or where interference is an issue, such as in hospitals.
Working with Wi-Fi?
Given the relative expense of Li-Fi and the fact it remains an immature technology with little standardisation, it may not yet be fully ready for wide-scale deployments across general businesses - but this is where the need to integrate and work alongside Wi-Fi will be crucial.
For large-scale deployments, Wi-Fi's maturity, cost-effectiveness and ease of use still make it the go-to option for many businesses. But in the coming years, as understanding of Li-Fi's unique advantages grows, this is likely to be more frequently considered as a supplementary connectivity option for parts of a network with challenging technical requirements that traditional Wi-Fi struggles to meet.
In 2018, CEO of Li-Fi startup Velmenni Deepak Solanki told APEX Experience magazine: "Li-Fi can play an important role in specific niche markets where Wi-Fi or radio systems are prohibited or have certain limitations such as aviation, healthcare, hazardous environments or congested areas.
"By seeing Li-Fi's evolution, I can see a mass-scale adoption happening in the upcoming two to three years."
