Light Bulb Doubles As Router: Release Of Formal Li-Fi Standard May Stimulate Wider Use In Challenging Indian Locales For Wi-Fi

The SECMOL School is an institute run by the Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh, an organisation founded by engineer-educationist and social reformer Sonam Wangchuk.

The residential school lies in tiny Phey village, 18 km from Ladakh’s capital Leh.

The location — at a height of over 10,000 feet (1,386 metre), where winter temperatures are often below minus 20 degrees Celsius — meant the village had no access to Internet for decades. 

Then things changed two years ago. Spurred by Wangchuk, two agencies came together to address the challenge, the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh (HIAL) joined hands with the Ahmedabad-based Nav Wireless Technologies (NavTech), a leading solutions and services provider of wireless and information communications systems.

NavTech is a specialist and arguably the leading promoter in India of the new technology known as Li-Fi — which uses light rather than radio frequencies to transmit data — competing with technologies like Wi-Fi and 5G. 

While working with smaller range 5-10 km, Li-Fi has some obvious advantages: it can provide data connectivity in areas where microwave systems like Wi-Fi cannot be deployed — near an operating theatre in a hospital where these waves will affect delicate instruments, or in strategic border areas where the using microwaves will pose a defence hazard.

Li-Fi is capable of data speeds comparable, or in some scenarios superior, to Wi-Fi — 1 GBPS to 10 GBPS — and by using lighting systems it reduces the infrastructure costs.

It is also effective in areas where conventional Wi-Fi networks are difficult to set up — like mountainous terrain.

Which is why for the SECMOL school and indeed for the entire village of Phey, Nav Wireless brought its Li-Fi technology to provide the vital Internet umbilical. 

Their engineers installed a Li-Fi transmitter on the highest peak among the mountains amongst which the village nestled.

This picked up Internet services offered free by Reliance Jio from Leh (which would otherwise not have penetrated the surrounding hills) and used a laser beam to send the data to a Li-Fi receiver on the roof of the school.

HIAL designed special enclosures so that the batteries required to power the mountain-top equipment could be fed by solar panels and protected from the sub-zero ambient temperatures.

For over 18 months, the Ladakhi school has enjoyed a stable, Gigabit internet connection and the benefits are trickling to the 300-plus inhabitants of the village.

New Standard For Li-Fi

Last week, the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE), the nodal agency for publishing global telecom and Internet standards, released its latest standard — IEEE 802.11bb — the world’s first standard for light-based communication like Li-Fi.

This new standard sets the foundation for the widespread adoption of Li-Fi technology and paves the way for the interoperability of Li-Fi systems with the widely used Wi-Fi standard. 

The Task Group which worked on the standard since 2018, was chaired by pureLi-Fi and supported by Fraunhofer HHI, two firms which have been at the forefront of Li-Fi development efforts worldwide. 

IEEE has placed details of the standard and its development here.

Said Nikola Serafimovski, the chairperson of the Task Group: “The release of the IEEE 802.11bb standard is a significant moment for the wireless communications industry. Li-Fi has attracted interest from some of the biggest industry players ranging from semiconductor companies to leading mobile phone manufacturers.”

Dominic Schulz, lead of Li-Fi development at Fraunhofer HHI suggests where the new light-based communication technology has an edge: “Li-Fi offers high-speed mobile connectivity in areas with limited Radio Frequency, like fixed wireless access, classrooms, medical, and industrial scenarios. It complements or serves as an alternative to WiFi and 5G. 802.11bb integrates easily with existing infrastructures. Light’s line-of-sight propagation enhances security by preventing wall penetration, reducing jamming and eavesdropping risks, and enabling precision indoor navigation.”

With a standard now in place, pureLi-Fi has announced that it is about to launch the world’s first commercial light antennas — the opto-electronic components which make Li-Fi possible — for all kinds of devices, from industrial to consumer, and from smart cars to smartphones.  

Even four years back, Wipro selected pureLi-Fi as its partner to bring Li-Fi to India — but has made no subsequent announcement. Perhaps it was waiting for the market to mature — and a standard to evolve.

Meanwhile, NavTech has been quietly evangelising Li-Fi in India and has installed systems in many strategic locations. 

Wi-Fi At Indo-Pak Border

Last year the company took its technology to a remote area in Gujarat —Nadabet — very close to the border with Pakistan, and connected by a single road with Suigam, Banaskantha district, 30 kilometre away.

The heavily saline ecosystem inhibits the laying of underground or overhead fibre optic cables. And radio frequency-based technologies like Wi-Fi, are a no-go, due to security considerations at the border.

The daily retreat ceremony at the Nadabet border gate with Pakistan, is a major tourist attraction (like the Wagah border) — and visitors as well as the Border Security Force sorely felt the lack of an Internet umbrella.

NavTech bridged the distance from Nadabet to the nearest village reached by Internet fibre optic cables — Jalaya — with a Li-Fi optical wireless link. 

Today it has brought secure gigabit Internet to the border post, as well as, the tourists who throng there regularly BSNL and Gujarat Informatics Ltd collaborated on the project.

Earlier this year, Nav Wireless Technologies entered into an agreement with IIT Delhi for the continued development of Li-Fi technologies.

IIT-D with support of NavTech will design an indigenous Li-Fi network based on visible light. This solution will be energy efficient as the same transceivers will be used both for illumination and communication — a significant breakthrough when it happens.

This explains the promise of Li-fi: "Your light bulb is a router”!

Says Professor Abhishek Dixit of the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT-Delhi: “We envision a health-safe indoor system with high throughput, low latency, and high security. As 6G research has picked up globally, our LiFi network can build upon our country’s ecosystem with its inherent energy efficiency and can satisfy some of its use cases. Our system will address three goals: Scalable, intelligent, and affordable.”

That is a challenging national goal: and last week’s formal standardisation may provide the stimulus for more Indian entities to explore and exploit this promising new communication technology.