Today, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has added 802.11bb as a standard for light-based wireless communications. The publishing of the standard has been welcomed by global Li-Fi businesses, as it will help speed the rollout and adoption of the data-transmission technology standard.
[…]Where Li-Fi shines (pun intended) is not just in its purported speeds as fast as 224 GB/s. Fraunhofer’s Dominic Schulz points out that as it works in an exclusive optical spectrum, this ensures higher reliability and lower latency and jitter. Moreover “Light’s line-of-sight propagation enhances security by preventing wall penetration, reducing jamming and eavesdropping risks, and enabling centimetre-precision indoor navigation,” says Shultz.
The technology can work using regular lighting points, but you won’t see any flicker or strobing, since it uses infrared. I honestly like the idea of every light fixture in your house being a network access point, but I’m also getting flashbacks to using IrDA to sync PDAs to PCs, and what would happen if you obstructed the line of sight.
This was tried and patented in the 1800’s. The problem is interference by matter. Forget using it in the toilet with the door closed. Photons might penetrate walls at low enough wavelenghts and can theoretically exist in two places at once according to scientists.
But this is not it. This is a jumped up IR that we had in the 80s.
At first I thought this could be good for high speed linking between facilities and the like, but as a local networking technology for connecting devices, I wonder who this is for? There’s already so much bandwidth in millimeter bands that this just seems unnecessary.
Saying that a 220 GBps capable media is just a “pumped up” IR setup from the 80s. It’s like saying the Saturn V was just a “pumped up” firecracker.