Overview of Visible Light Communication (VLC)

and Light Fidelity (LiFi)

Dhruva Sahrawat
dhruva15026@iiitd.ac.in

AbstractIn recent years, there has been significant research of the LI-FI. The working of the LI-FI is itself very simpleif
into Optical Wireless Communication as a promising complemen- the LED is ON, the signal transmitted is a digital 1 whereas if
tary technology for RF technology which may help us in resolving it is OFF, the signal transmitted is a digital 0. By varying the
the current RF spectrum crisis. This paper aims at reviewing
and summarizing recent advancements in OW communication, rate at which the LEDs flicker, we can encode various data
in particular, for indoor communications where most mobile data and transmit it.
traffic is consumed, light fidelity (Li-Fi) which is related to visible Li-Fi signals are confined to narrowly-focused beams that
light communication (VLC) offers many key advantages in indoor do not travel through walls. Moreover, LED lights are natural
deployment scenarios . The term Li-Fi refers to visible light beam-formers, which makes it easier to create separate uplink
communication (VLC) technology that uses as medium to deliver
high-speed communication in a manner similar to Wi-Fi. Li-Fi and downlink channels. The LI-FI allows us to network via
provides better bandwidth, efficiency, availability and security a desktop photosensitive unit that works in tandem with an
than Wi-Fi and has already achieved high speeds in the lab. In off-the-shelf, unmodified light fixture. The desktop unit has
the present paper the authors will give a detailed study on Li-Fi infrared LEDs to communicate in the uplink channel. It is
technology, its advantages and its future scope. worth noting here that it has been shown that speeds upto
Index Terms: OWC, Li-Fi, VLC, optical wireless communi-
cation, visible light communications 10Gbps has been proven with LI-FI too.
V IABILITY OF L I -F I AND ITS NEED
I NTRODUCTION A. Problems with current wireless technology
Internet has become an integral part of our life. The devices Capacity: Wireless spectrum is limited. With advent of
all around us are becoming more smart relying upon internet. 4G and 5G, the amount of free spectrum is running
It is almost impossible to imagine a day in our lives, when out. Increasing efficiency or introducing technologies
we are not connected to the net. Wireless Communication like small cell do not address this problem, we need
plays a very important role in ensuring reliable connectivity alternative means.
to internet. It has evolved into a fundamental commodity Security: Radio Waves can penetrate through walls. This
with majority of the world population relying upon it. The leads to many security concerns as anyone can sniff on
exponential increase in mobile data traffic has led to massive the packets.
investments into mobile spectrum and wireless systems. The Latency: Wireless technologies have latency in order of
limited RF spectrum is a bottleneck in further growth of millisecond which presents problems with highly sensi-
mobile technology. It has been estimated in the following tive applications like online games.
years more than 17 exabytes of data traffic will be transferred Availability: It cannot be used in all environments, partic-
through mobile networks every month. Unlimited data packs ularly in highly sensitive environment like airplane where
remains a pipe dream in wireless technology. Most recently, it may interfere with existing equipment or in hospitals
VLC has been identified as a potential solution for this crisis. etc.
Over the past decade significant research has been done Efficiency: Cellular tower consume massive amount of
into exploring different parts of electromagnetic spectrum energy with most of the energy being used for cooling.
that could help in relieving a large portion of data traffic With increase in users and rising popularity of various content
from current mobile spectrum. Currently 600 MHz to around driven data like netflix and youtube, the the data consumption
2300 MHz are used for commercial deployment of Wireless is growing at a very fast pace. The wireless technology is
Spectrum. Wifi uses 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. In higher frequency falling far behind wired technology with wired technology
domain mm waves are used to provide backbone internet offering actual speed of 10 Gbps. Also the no of WiFi hotspots
connectivity to mobile towers. One of the most interesting is increasing, as is the WiFi traffic volume is also steadily
results are in infrared and visible light domains. Particularly rising, the reliability of signals is bound to suffer with high
for Visible Light , widespread infrastructure already exists. latency and packet loss.
Light communication uses Light Emitting Diodes as a medium
for high speed communication in a similar manner as WiFi. By B. Advantages of Li-Fi
varying the current through the LED at a very high speed, we Capacity: Visible Light spectrum is 10000 times more
can vary the output at very high speeds. This is the principle wider compared with RF spectrum and it mostly free with
 TABLE I rate or its pattern to determine the data being sent. We can
C OMPARISON BETWEEN L I -F I AND W I -F I improve this setup by using a parallel setup or by using red,
Parameter LI-FI WI-FI blue and green LEDs to change lights frequency, with each
Speed High High frequency encoding a different data channel, thus allowing for
Spectrum 10,000 times broader than Narrow spectrum a high through output. Theoretically speeds of upto 10 Gbps
that of Wi-Fi
Data density High Low have been achieved which far greater than current average
Security High security due to Less secure due to speed of WiFi which is around 200- 300 Mbps.
non-penetration of light transparency
through wall B. Modulation techniques
Reliability Medium Medium
Bandwidth High due to broad spec- Low Since visible light is used for communication, modulation
trum techniques are required to modulate the data into the the light
Transmit/receive High Medium pulses which are then sent as signals. Various modulation
power
Ecological Low Medium techniques are:
Impact OFDM: Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing is
Device- High High
to-device
used for encoding digital data into multiple carrier fre-
connectivity quency. It a frequency division method.
Obstacle in- High Low OOK: On-Off keying is a simple form of Amplitude
terference
shift keying where the presence of carrier for a specific
Bill of mate- High Medium
rials duration denotes binary one while its absence denotes
Market ma- Low High binary zero. It is not very optimal.
turity PVM: Pulsing signal is encoded with data in Pulse width
Latency In the order of microsec- In the order of mil-
onds lisecond modulation.
PPM: Pulse position modulation is a form of signal
modulation in which M message bits are encoded by
most of the equipment already available. transmitting a single pulse in one of possible required
Security: Light waves cannot penetrate walls and can be time-shifts.
more directed as they form beams, thus data transmission SIM-OFDM: Sub-carrier Index Modulation adds an an-
is more secure. other dimension to 2D techniques like QAM and ASK
Latency: Since it forms beams and is directed, the latency The subcarrier index is used to transmit data.
would be very low .
C. Multiple Access
Availability: It can be used everywhere as the current
equipment can be easily used for VLC with minimal Multiple access is also necessary for a networking solution
modifications. which allows multiple users to access at the same time isolated
Efficiency: LED consume very little power and are highly from one another i.e. without any mutual cross messaging.
efficient. In Optical Wireless Communication various methods used in
LiFi do not replace Wireless technologies, but they can help RF may be used like Frequency Division multiple access ,
in reducing the load and providing quality service. time division multiple access or code division multiple access.
One of the suitable techniques is Wavelength division multiple
W ORKING OF L I -F I access which is directly related to colour, it reduces complexity
but needs strict requirements. It also needs special LEDs which
A. Basic Working Principle
are customized for it.
LiFi employs principle of Visible Light Communication
which uses visible light for data communication. In VLC, we D. Uplink
use source of light both for illumination and for communicat- Uplink also forms an integral part of any Visible light
ing with other devices by sending information through it. communication techniques. Existing duplex techniques used
It is done by encoding it into the light through variety of in previous paragraphs may be used . Using infrared is also
techniques, like switching it on and off, considering on as 1 viable and is right now commercially available. The RF may
and off as 0. We could also encode information by varying the also be used for uplink as LiFi would do the heavy lifting and
switching rate. Different frequencies i.e colour of light could offload data traffic from the RF network, and thereby providing
also be used for encoding the information but it may be hard significant RF spectrum relief. This is particularly relevant
to do due to interference of ambient light which may affect since there is a traffic imbalance in favor of the downlink
the data being sent. Virtually any way of encoding the data in in current wireless communication systems.
the light can be called Visible Light Communication.
We can do it simply by using LEDs which are right now A PPLICATION OF VLC
available everywhere. Normally LEDs are used as down link VLC technology can be used almost everywhere, one has
transmitter whereas detector is used to detect the switching to wonder at all the places where it can be used.
 utilized to implement low-cost communication in order to
build interactive toys which can be used to build complex
models working in tandem which each other.
Smart Classes: LiFi can be used to implement smart class
which has become very popular and is present in lots of
schools and colleges. Using LiFi it may be possible to
engage each and every student with animations and visual
input on what is happening.

D ISADVANTAGES AND C HALLENGES

Reliability and network coverage are major challenges
to VLC. Interference with ambient light source and
opaque materials in the path of transmission will cause
Fig. 1. LI-FI interruptions in the communication.
It cannot pass through objects and is directed, so any
blockage in the path will lead to signal loss.
High installation cost and operation cost as for imple-
Vehicle to Vehicle Communication: Due to presence of
mentation over large scale would need huge investment
vehicle lights and traffic lights VLC can be used for
and maintenance charges.
Vehicular Communication. It can be used for collision
We would still need Cellular and WiFi to fall back as it
warning, emergency braking etc.
would not work well outdoors, on the move etc.
Underwater communication: RF communications do not
Interference with other LiFi devices would impact scala-
travel well in sea water, while there is no such problem
bility and would impact its normal operations.
with visible light. Therefore VLC can be used to com-
integration of the VLC with existing technologies such
municate underwater, it can be used to direct unmanned
as WiFi and standardization of VLC.
vehicles with ship based relay structure.
LiFi: One of the major uses of VLC, it can be used
C ONCLUSION AND F UTURE S COPE
to supplement existing wireless networks, with speeds
exceeding 10Gbps speed. Features like high bandwidth, non-interference with the
Sensitive areas: It can be used in sensitive areas like radio waves in electromagnetic sensitive areas and non-
hospital which do not allow WiFi due to radiation or in hazardous to health has made visible light communication an
Aircraft where RF may interfere with aircraft system. attractive technique for future communication. If this technol-
Internet of Things: It can be used to connect all of the ogy can be used efficiently, we might soon have something of
devices on an unlicensed and congestion-free network the kind of WiFi hotspots wherever a light bulb is available.
with very low latency with use of inexpensive equipment Li-Fi is 250 times faster than its analogous WiFi, which
like photo detectors and LEDs. uses radio frequency for communication. Potential applica-
Sound Communication: It can be used for transmission tions of VLC include Li-Fi, visible light ID system, Hospital
of music signals. robots, underwater communication and trafc communication
Information broadcast: Signboards using LED can be systems.Researchers are developing micron sized LEDs which
used to broadcast data like in airport, it can be used to flicker on and off 1000 times faster than larger LEDs. They
broadcast aircraft arrival and departure etc. provide faster data transfer and also take up less space.
Cellular Networks: In places of high congestion it can be Moreover, 1000 micron sized LEDs can fit into area required
used to supplement Cellular networks helping in relieving by 1 sq. mm large single LED. A 1 sq. mm sized array of
some of the load off cellular network ensuring better micron sized LEDs could hence communicate 1000*1000 (i.e.
quality of service. a million) times as much information as a single 1mm LED.
GigaSpeed Technology:The Li-Fi Consortium provides The Li-Fi Consortium asserts that it is possible to achieve
the fastest wireless data transfer technology presently speeds greater than 10 Gbps. Also we can improve the speed
available. Our current solutions offer effective transmis- with parallelism with huge array of photo diodes if we can
sion rates of up to 10 Gbps, allowing a 2 hour HDTV somehow reduce interference so that they can work together
film to be transferred in less than 30 seconds. This can with each other. Also currently research is being done on
be extended to several 100 Gbps in future versions. This multi-user connectivity where large amount of people gathered
provides plenty of room for future growth. together could use LiFi to communicate with each other to
Smart Lighting: Street lamps can in the future be used reduce the load off WiFi. With all these promising results, it
to provide Li-Fi hotspots and can also be used to control seems that Li-Fi is rapidly emerging as a powerful wireless
and monitor lighting and data. networking solution to the looming RF spectrum crisis, and
Toys: several toys consist of LED lights and these can be an enabling technology for the future Internet-of-Everything.
Based on past experience that the number of wireless appli-
cations increases by the square of the number of available
physical connections, Li-Fi could be at the heart of an entire
new industry for the next wave of wireless communications.
R EFERENCES
[1] Shubham Chatterjee, Shalabh Agarwal, Asoke Nath, scope and Chal-
lenges in Light Fidelity(LiFi)Technology in Wireless Data Commu-
nication, International Journal of Innovative Research in Advanced
Engineering(IJIRAE), Issue 6, Vol 2, Page 1-9,(June 2015).
[2] Anurag Sarkar, Shalabh Agarwal, Asoke Nath, Li-Fi technology: data
trans-mission through visible light, Int. J. Adv. Res. Comput. Sci.
Manag. Stud. 3 (6)(2015)
[3] H. Elgala, R. Mesleh, and H. Haas, Indoor optical wireless communi-
cation: Potential and state-of-the-art, IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 49, no.
9, pp. 5662, Sep. 2011.
[4] Dobroslav Tsonev, Stefan Videv, Harald Haas, Light fidelity (Li-Fi):
towards all-optical networking, Proc. SPIE 9007, Broadband Access
Communication Technologies VIII, 900702 (1 February 2014).