LI-FI Technology : Paris, the City of Lights? – Green Tech Explorer

During my time in Paris, I met Simon Laurent, founder of HAVR, a company that digitalizes the door lock by using the Li-Fi Technology. Thanks to the smart lock, one can open, monitor and manage any door in real time, from any smartphone.

If I had not prepared the interview, I would have thought Simon was kidding. Fortunately, Simon was patient enough to explain to an already old-28-year-old INSEAD MBA candidate that I am, this amazing technology.

Li-Fi is a mobile wireless technology that uses light rather than radio frequencies to transmit data, embedding the information in beams of light to transfer data. Like the old Morse language, Li-Fi encodes binarily (“0” or “1”) the LED lamp signals (e.g. On/Off). Using this principle, chains of information can be sent at high speed, undetectable by the human eye.

Li-Fi-receiver devices convert these beams into an electrical signal, which are then converted back into data.

Li-Fi is complementary to WiFi and holds solves challenges faced by 5G that is already overcrowded and soon saturated.
Moreover, Li-Fi Technology has other advantages:

· Bandwidth: Li-Fi can deliver multiple gigabytes speeds in mobile devices, much more than Wi-Fi. LED light bulbs have high intensities and therefore can achieve very large data rates.

· No Interference: This is what happens when you are at a concert and can’t send texts. The network is saturated. With Li-Fi, it is not possible.

· Localisation: Li-Fi is fully networked and each light has a unique IP address, which facilitates geofencing.

· Security: Light can be constrained and secured in a physical space. Due to better localization, Li-Fi offers also a more accurate asset tracking and user authentication

· Speed: Li-Fi is considered three-time faster than Wi-Fi which can support innovation, automation, and applications such as augmented reality and virtual reality.

· Reliability: Li-Fi offer 1000 times the data density of radio technology (Wi-Fi, Cellular)

· Installation: Radio frequency communication requires radio circuits, antennas and complex receivers, whereas Li-Fi uses direct modulation methods as low-cost infrared communications devices. The retrofit question is also very important: Installation of optical fibre cable everywhere has been proved to be impossible while Li-Fi could ensure easily a full coverage.

Ok but what the link with Smart Mobility?

Due to the high-speed, low latency characteristics of Li-Fi, and the ubiquitous nature of LED lights in our transport infrastructure, Li-Fi is an ideal technology to complement and augment current wireless technologies used for autonomous transport and cars. The amount of data needed to be treated would be more manageable with Li-Fi.

Indeed, cars could communicate to one another through headlights impulses. Traffic light and other infrastructure could also guide cars in a most efficient way. You could also imagine having the Eiffel Tower light Radar transmitting internet or any other sort of information to solar panels, playing the role of light receptors, or even to vehicles.

When you know that France is one of the most stable and qualitative electric and light infrastructures in cities and highway, the motto “Paris, the city of lights” has a … brilliant future.

Video explaining the concept briefly: