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Interesting Highlights From KVKurious Podcast Episode 4 - Harald Haas: LiFi, IoT, Commercializing and Scaling Tech Innovation
Today, we will discuss a recent KVKurious Podcast podcast. Professor Harald Haas was invited as a guest. Prof. Harald Haas FRSE is the pioneer of LiFi. He is one of the co-founders of PureLiFi. He also holds the Chair of Mobile Communications and is the director of the LiFi Research and Development Center at the University of Edinburgh.
They also discuss the following topics:
LiFi technology
Internet of Things (IoT)
Commercialisation and Scaling tech innovation
Below are some of the podcast’s conversations. Some of these conversations have been edited by Chuks from LiFi Tech News:
Krishna K V: “So, you were mentioning how that needs to be more aware and perhaps more of an incentive or reason for, you know, different stakeholders in the system to really jump onto this waggon. What do you think are some pressing reasons for you know, on existing internet service providers or governments or other communication device manufacturers, what's a good reason for them to jump onto this waggon? What do you think they're missing today that LiFi promises?”
Prof.Harald Haas: “That's a very good, good question. And I think, for us, there's still a big job to do in order to educate people and stakeholders, because we have to understand that we are introducing a completely new technology in the sense of sort of wireless connectivity, where, first of all, there's been a lot of investment that went into radio-based wireless communications. And there's a lot of drive in order to get better, better LiFi, to get better cellular, 5g and so on. There are priorities that the industry has in order to be able to monetise its investment. And therefore there is naturally probably not that much of a sort of natural interest to scan and see what else is there that may be in the medium to short term, can really unlock completely new applications and completely new possibilities around as I said earlier, AR, VR digital twins, even sort of connectivity and so on. And it's really the opportunity to showcase to people the benefits that technology can bring because of the fact that there is so much spectrum that can be utilised. And the fact that they are, so they are existing devices. out there.”
Prof.Harald Haas: “I think that's a very good question. And as I said earlier, we have that technology already deployed in niche verticals. For a mass market, I think a very important step is the integration into smartphones or into mobile devices. And that could be either via a sleeve that is LiFi-enabled or by a dongle or via an integrated module. And, and there's a lot of development in that area. And so, once we see that integrated, I mean, that will unlock those new applications I've spoken about. So, I mean, it's imminent. And I would say I think certainly I mean, within the next couple of years, we will see a major change in sort of consumer uptake of that technology.”
Krishna K V: “Very interesting. I'd maybe take a step outside of this and, you know, ask you a much broader question around. What do you think is just the future of communication? And not just connectivity? Maybe in 2030 or in 2050? How do you see the world communicating?”
Prof.Harald Haas: “I think yours is a very, very difficult but very exciting question. And really, it may be if we look back 20 years from now, where were we 20 years ago, I say around 2000. So, this was the time when we move from, from circuit switch to communication, through voice communication, to more mobile internet, we didn't have a smartphone, that time you didn't have smart devices was primarily voice calls that were taken by a phone. And now see where we are basically packet data, we have, we have data rates up to one gigabit per second at that time, we had data rates of no 50 kilobits per second and more. So, we have increased the data rate. And we've substantially improved the performance. Now 20 years from now, we'll see this trend moving further. But in my view, what will be a massive change is the connectivity between machines. So far, it's all human-centric. It's all social media is all people using the internet for YouTube and all the video sharing. And that consumes a lot of data. But we'll see in the future machines that do exactly their social media as well, but at data rates even higher because they need much more information, think about an auto autonomous car, it needs gigabytes of data, upload and download per day, an aircraft to giga, gigabytes, terabytes of data. I mean, all these autonomous systems require a lot of data. So, we will see basically an explosion of autonomous systems that require connectivity that makes our home, our world do to get smarter with the robots that assist us. And we've seen just recently a robot being encased in Silicon Valley, a humanoid robot. And that's the way to go. We need robotics. But in order to have all this working, we need connectivity. We need a nervous system, not only inside a robot but between robots and between robots and the environment. And therefore connectivity is a critical part of the infrastructure that has to be developed. And if you don't do that, we can't really move on. overt in our digital societies in a way that the potential is there.”
Krishna K V: “So, would you like to elaborate a little bit more on what you think are key limitations of both the academia and industry study?”
Prof.Harald Haas: “I mean, might give you my Frank view here. So, the industry has to be very product-oriented, very revenue-oriented, it has to be very strategic, in a sense, what industry can do in the industry has to play understand really, where they play in the market and gear everything towards one narrative in terms of making the product the industry is selling a success. That's very narrative, and therefore, many things in terms of out-of-the-box thinking often are excluded, because they don't feed into that, that that narrative, meaning, as an example with other companies that give employees more freedom, but that's only possible if you have a huge company that has the resources to allow that freedom, but if you talk about a smaller company has to be focused around a product that limits naturally a few things that can be done. On the other hand, academia allows exactly that, out of the box, the blue sky thinking, coming up with radically new ideas, and academia comes up with ideas. But, Academia is measured by the number of new ideas that are produced. And therefore, you see that cycle of having a new idea, testing it, finding the end and the analysis around it, publishing the paper and then publishing that high-impact journal paper. And once that is published, go back to the next idea and test it and do another paper. But really, it stays within this sort of incentive cycle of academia. But I've been trying to do is basically take the freedom of academia, right to research papers and to have high impact research papers, but then take also the next steps in, in stepping up that technology readiness level to prototypes and, and then even find founding a company and trying to get it into the market.”
Prof.Harald Haas: “I think the way to do it really speaks to people to come out and explain what the benefits are and what that new innovation could achieve. And showing that the innovation works, first of all, but really going out and using social media using platforms to spread the idea and galvanise people in a minute. It's a hard thing to do, but it is very rewarding. And because it's hard, that's why I said it's important if one believes in it, not to give up because there is always going to be a backslash.”
Podcast Recording
You can also listen to the podcast in full at the following link:
LiFi Tech News’ Take on the podcast episode
In our own opinion, the podcast was very insightful on the current challenges of convincing the benefits of LiFi to relevant stakeholders and the masses.
Some key notes taken from the podcast:
-More needs to be done to increase the awareness of LiFi and this needs commitment and diligence.
-Some misconceptions about the technology are still around and this needs to be rectified with more education and demonstration of LiFi technology.
-It takes time to bring new technology to the masses. So, patience is needed.
-It is hard to convince VC to invest in Large scale LiFi projects.
-Within the next few years, we will start seeing an increase in consumer uptake of LiFi technology.
I highly recommend you all to follow his social media channels:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/k-v-krishna
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kvkurious/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kvkurious
Medium: https://medium.com/@kvkurious
Li-Fi Conference 2022
The Li-Fi Conference 2022 Edition was a great success. Li Fi Tech News will very soon write articles on the topics treated at the Conference.
What is LiFi?
LiFi, also known as "Light Fidelity" is a wireless optical networking technology, which uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to transmit data. In 2011, professor Harald Haas made a LiFi demonstration at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Global Talk on Visible Light Communication (VLC).
VLC uses light as a medium to deliver high-speed communication like Wi-Fi and complies with the IEEE standard IEEE 802.15.7. The IEEE 802.15.7 is a high-speed, bidirectional, and fully networked wireless communication technology-based standard similar to Wi-Fi's IEEE 802.11.
How does LiFi work?
LiFi is a high speed, bidirectional, and fully networked wireless communication of data using light. LiFi constitutes of several light bulbs that form a wireless network.
When an electrical current goes through to a LED light bulb, a stream of light (photons) emits from the lamp. LED bulbs are semiconductor devices, which means that the brightness of the light flowing through them can change at extremely high speeds. The signal is sent by modulating the light at different rates. The signal can then be received by a detector that interprets the changes in light intensity (the signal) as data. Also when the LED is ON, you transmit a digital 1, and when it is OFF, you transmit a 0.
LiFi Benefits
The primary benefits of LiFi are as follows:
• Security: Provides entirely secure access. Where there is no light there is no data.
• Safety: Does not produce electromagnetic radiation and does not interfere with existing electronic systems.
• Localisation: Allows localisation due to the small coverage area of LiFi access point - localisation can be used for very precise asset tracking.
• Data density: Provides ubiquitous high-speed wireless access that offers substantially greater data density (data rate per unit area) than RF through high bandwidth reuse.
Credit to Oledcomm
LiFi Applications
LiFi can be used for so many applications and the list is increasing every year. You can read our updated list of Li-Fi applications at the following link:
Credit to pureLiFi
LiFi Systems Reviews by LiFi Tech News
OLEDCOMM LIFIMAX KIT REVIEW - ONE YEAR IN
We reviewed the LiFiMax kit produced by the leading French LiFi company Oledcomm. We bought this LiFi kit system at the end of 2020. After over a year of use, we decided to write a review of this LiFi system. We looked briefly at the profile of Oledcomm, a brief history of the LiFiMax system, the Kit box contents, some testing and performance results of this LiFi system, the customer experience and our own verdict (the good and the bad points) of the LiFiMax kit.
You can read the review on this link:
https://www.lifitn.com/blog/lifimaxreview
SIGNIFY TRULIFI 6002.1 STARTER KIT SYSTEM REVIEW
We also reviewed the Trulifi 6002.1 starter kit produced by Signify, the world leader in lighting for professionals, consumers and lighting for the Internet of Things. We got this LiFi kit system with the help of PCDSI and Signify around August 2021. In a similar fashion done with our previous review of the LiFiMax kit a few months ago, we will look briefly at the profile of Signify, a brief history of the Trulifi 6002.1 kit, the Kit box contents, some testing and performance results of this LiFi system, the customer experience and our own verdict (the good points and the bad points) of the Trulifi 6002.1 kit.
You can read the review on this link:
https://www.lifitn.com/blog/trulifi6002review
In conclusion, if you are also interested to hear more information about the OWNII Coin, you can contact the OWNii Support team at info@ownii.net or use the contact form on the new OWNii website, ownii.net. If you are enquiring about LiFi devices such as the LiFiMax kits and the Trulifi kits, you can contact us through our chatbot or by sending an email through our contact us form. If you enjoyed this post and would like to hear more updates about LiFi technology, subscribe to our newsletter. Don’t forget to subscribe to our social media accounts. You can also join our Telegram group about LiFi technology on this link: