Dutch agency investigates wireless using light

The Dutch radiocommunications agency, Agentschap Telecom, has published research on the use of “Li-Fi” – light fidelity – which uses light for wireless communication. It considers that internet via light can become important to enable fast internet and also relieve Wi-Fi networks, which it says are overloaded in parts of the Netherlands, especially in city centres and other busy areas. Li-Fi uses light from LED lights and can achieve a speed of 50 Mbps and requires only a dongle for the receiver, say in a laptop. The first products are already on the European market. An alternative is internet via infrared, which can reach speeds up to a thousand times faster than the average Wi-Fi connection; bandwidth is also a lot bigger. But it is not yet available on the market. The research was carried out by Stratix and TU Eindhoven. Read more

• Thursday, 22 February 2018