Image Ahmadamro, used under CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licence.
The HomeGrid Forum says visible light communication (VLC) – light beams modulated according to its G.Hn standard is set to be the next major innovation in realising the full potential of both the smart home and the smart city.
The G.hn standard is already used for communication over powerline, coax, twisted pair and plastic optical fibre.
Marketing chair of the HomeGrid Forum, Livia M Rosu, said VLC held great potential for smart homes with high density connectivity needs, especially where sensitive data had to be transmitted between multiple connected devices within one room, because the visible light provides low latency and avoids the kind of interruption that can sometimes happen with radio frequency communications as a result of congestion.
“[Light] supports larger bandwidths, it can act as both a source and receiver, it has low power consumption, enhanced security and is easy to install,” she said. “This is why the market is growing at such an unprecedented rate and is expected to exceed ten billion devices by 2023.”
She added: “VLC requires a line of sight between a lightbulb LED transceiver and a connected device, meaning that it cannot pass through walls. In other words, for environments such as schools and hospitals, VLC reduces electromagnetic interference, therefore not affecting sensitive devices.
“For airports or government buildings, where there is more sensitive information that can be a target of cyberattack, VLC eliminates the risk of data interception by outsiders which are out of sight, therefore offering a vastly enhanced security platform.”
ITU standardises visible light communication
The ITU in April approved a new ITU standard for indoor visible light communication, also known as ‘LiFi’.
The new standard, ITU G.9991, details the system architecture, physical layer and data link layer specification for ‘high-speed indoor VLC transceivers’, the VLC access points within lightbulbs.
The G.Hn standard was developed by the ITU. The physical layers and the architecture of G.hn were standardised in 2009 as G.9960 and the data link layer as G.9961 in 2010.
The ITU said VLC represented a meeting of many companies and two quite different industries, the connectivity industry and the lighting industry.
“With lighting companies like General Electric, Philips Lighting and Osram expressing interest in LiFi technology, VLC standards are expected to be implemented by manufacturers of products such as mobile devices, PCs, VR goggles and VLC dongles.,” it said.
“VLC standards could also offer valuable support to the Internet of Things, a landscape composed of a very diverse set of solution providers.”
In October 2018 Firefly LiFi, a manufacturer of VLC products, saidits SecureLink LiFi products were compliant with what was then the current draft of ITU G.9991.
