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Old 02-26-2016, 06:47 PM   #3
murg
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Sorry to cast a shadow over this enlightening dawn of a new technology, but it faces many hurdles.

Other than the technical ones, it has to reach some level of market penetration before it takes off. So we're in the classic chicken and egg period: devices need sensors and there has to be broadcast infrastructure. And in the cut-throat mobile device market, non one adds features just for the hell of it (except for maybe on the highest end of the market).

The biggest hurdle is that while it may claim to not need line-of-sight, in reality it does. Yes, signals may bounce off walls, but this severely restricts the bandwidth. While line-of-sight is necessary, you have to have your device visible to the LiFi source, and the emitter on your device must be visible to the LiFi source. So something as simple as having your phone upsidedown might break the technology. Or in your pocket or purse.

Line of sight, and this technology really does require line of sight for bidirectionality, is the major problem with it.

Another factor will be interference. The light bulbs will have to be slightly out of tune with each other, or they will interfere with each other.

Yes, there will be applications that this works for, but I don't think that it will hit general release. After all, from the point of view of the people who will pay for the infrastructure, there isn't that much need for the additional bandwidth, WiFi delivers all the bandwidth they need to deliver their data.
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