LiFi, short for Light Fidelity, may be here earlier than we think if the breakthrough recorded by Chinese scientists is anything to go by. LiFi is a wireless optical network technology that uses Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) for performing data transfers.
A team of Chinese researchers have created F-CDs a fluorescent carbon nanomaterial, an alternative to rare earth materials, to provide the light for LiFi to transmit data safer and faster.
According to the lead researcher Qu Songnan, an associate researcher at Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences“Many researchers around the world are still working on this. We were the first to successfully create it using cost-effective raw materials such as urea with simple processing.”
Qu said rare earth has a long lifespan which reduces the speed of LiFi transmission. However, F-CDs enjoy the advantage of faster data transmission speeds. He adds that this is significant for the development of LiFi, which he expects to enter the market in just six years.
Chinese tests in 2015 showed that LiFi can reach speeds of 50 gigabytes per second which means a movie could be downloaded in just 0.3 seconds.
Harald Haas, a Professor at the university of Edinburgh UK, is the founder of LiFi. He first presented it to the public at a 2011 TED Global talk. The first LiFi smartphone prototype was presented to the world at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
