Li-Fi' provides a light bulb moment for wireless web

Li-Fi' provides a light bulb moment for wireless web The light bulb figuratively suspended above a human head has long been symbolic of the eureka moment that every inventor craves. But for German physicist Herald Haas, it's the bulb itself that provides the inspiration for his bright idea. Haas and his team at the UK's University of Edinburgh, are the brains behind a new patented technology that uses beams of flickering light to transmit digital information wirelessly, a process known as Visible Light Communication (VLC). "My big idea is to turn light bulbs into broadband communication devices ... so that they not only provide illumination, but an essential utility," he says. Haas claims that data can be sent by adding a microchip to any humble LED bulb, making it blink on and off at a phenomenal speed, millions of times per second. "My big idea is to turn light bulbs into broadband communication devices ... so that they not only provide illumination, but an essential utility Harald Haas, University of Edinburgh It's this capability that allows LEDs to transmit data in a rapid stream of binary code that, although invisible to the naked eye, can then be detected by a light-sensitive receiver. Read more: 'Teach young to be innovative' "It's a bit like sending a Morse code signal with a torch, but at a much faster rate and using the alphabet that computers understand," explains Haas. The implication is that wherever you have a light bulb -- and there are an estimated 14 billion of them worldwide -- you have the potential for a wireless Internet connection. In practice, it means that any street lamp could double up as a web hotspot. But VLC, or "Li-Fi" as it has been nicknamed, does more than just increase Internet accessibility. The dominant technology used for wireless data transfer, Wi-Fi, is transmitted through radio wave signals. However, radio waves represent only a small fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum and so, as demand for wireless connectivity grows, the supply of available bandwidth diminishes.