Transcript 0:02 Li-Fi will become the dominant bearer in the future because of its huge spectrum once, once we see really the adoption in first consumer devices. 0:13 And, and this is not really far off to see consumer devices equipped with, with Li-Fi capability. 0:20 [on-hold music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, your voice for our connected world. With your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:37 Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:42 My next guest set up and co-founded PureLiFi and is currently the chief scientific officer and director of the Li-Fi Research and Development Center. 0:53 Li-Fi, as you might know, is the mobile wireless technology that uses light rather than radio frequency to transmit data. 1:01 In addition to his work with Li-Fi, he also serves as a distinguished professor of mobile communications at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, and is a visiting professor at the University of Edinburgh. 1:15 He's here back again, Harald Haas, professor at the University of Strathclyde. Harald, welcome back to the show. 1:23 Peggy, uh, thank, thank you very much for the kind introduction, and, uh, let me tell you why Li-Fi is important. And, um, before I do that, uh, let me s-tell you also what Li-Fi is. 1:34 Uh, Li-Fi is, um, wireless communications like we have with Wi-Fi and with cellular, but we don't use the radio spectrum, we use your ordinary light bulb in your home, uh, for high-speed data connection. 1:47 That, that, that, that in a nutshell is, is Li-Fi. Now, why is it so important? Um, I mean, sadly, uh, COVID has taught us that our life relies very much on data connections at home. 2:03 We have been going on Teams, on Zooms, and have been on, online all the time, and we need a, a lot of data, a lot of data connections and connectivity in order to do that. But that's only one example. 2:15 Uh, our entire life depends o-on, on data connections, and data that is produced rarely stays where it is or where it's generated. 2:26 And the amount of data we, we consume exponentially grows, and has been on an exponentially growing, and it will continue to expo- uh, exponentially grow. And that leads to something that people call the spectrum crunch. 2:39 Uh, that means we don't h-h-have enough resources, in this case radio frequency resources, in order to supply that demand. 2:49 And we see future applications coming in the area of 6G and, and 5G around AR and VR. 3:00 So the metaverse, uh, that requires, all these devices require enormous amounts of data because in order to avoid getting seasick, in order to avoid getting, uh, low, low performance, you need high-resolution displays in AR/VR headsets, and you can't tolerate a lot of compression. 3:17 So that, that means one to 10 gigabit data links are needed for our AR/VR headsets. 3:23 We've-- we are building the digital twins, so we replicate the real world in the digital domain, in the online world, and digital twins require therefore a lot of data connectivity. 3:34 We also see that there's a lot of vulnerabilities on, on, on radio communication in terms of security. People break into cars, break into the homes via the, um, surveillance cameras. 3:48 Um, so there's, there's vulnerability in the RF domain, and, and, and Li-Fi provides orders of magnitude better security, physical layer security, in order to have not only more data, but also more secure data going forward. 4:02 And as I said, we are defining 6G at the moment, and, and that community talks about capabilities of one terabit per second, um, data, data transmission capability. And, a-and, and that, that is... 4:19 You need these resources and, and therefore you need, you need different, different, um, spectrum than the radio spectrum. 4:26 And, and, and, and light spectrum, the optical spectrum will be able to deliver that because the, the total resources that are available are 2,600 times larger than the entire radio spectrum. 4:38 So there's plenty of resources out there for building these b-these networks and, and high-speed connectivity. So Harald, I always like to put it in, in terms that most people understand. 4:50 When we're at home, we don't want something that's gonna make it slow. 4:53 You know, when you talk about security, we always know the bad guys are out there, so we wanna make sure everything, when we're getting our information, it's secure. 5:02 W-- I, I just did a, a radio show talking about how so many things are being hacked. So you're saying, look, this is gonna make it safer. You're talking about we- Yeah... 5:11 we're creating these avatars in our AR and VR so that we, we wanna make sure that this is crisp and there's no delay in that. 5:18 I mean, all of these things that you're talking about so everybody's able to download, there's no slowness in that, what we have when everyone's at home. 5:26 So you're talking, we're gonna make this better, faster, quicker, no matter what we're streaming, no matter what we're looking at, I mean, everything that we're doing. 5:35 So when you think about, when you talk about radio frequency and all of these things right now, what made you come up with then with Li-Fi as being the answer to all of these things that are frustrating us with data downloads, data speeds? 5:51 You know, that's what we all talk about when we're at home. W- even when we're in business, we see that there's, everything is slower and slower, and COVID really exacerbated the problem that we're facing. 6:02 That's an absolutely great question. 6:04 Um, andThe, the, the way, the reason I came up with that is, uh, because m-my background is a wireless communications, uh, researcher, and I, uh, and 20 years ago, I left Siemens where I was involved in, 6:21 um, developing key technologies for, at that time, 4G cellular. And there, there's regular conferences, the World Radio conferences that would allocate new spectrum to cellular. 6:33 And it was clear at that time that the amount of radio spectrum that would be allocated to cellular systems would not be sufficient to provide, uh, the, uh, provide the resources for what is that time was coming on the mobile, the mobile internet. 6:51 So I, I saw that coming, so I went into academia and at the same time I was inspired by colleagues in Japan, Professor Nakagawa at Keio University, who played with, with the wide high brightness LEDs for data communication. 7:05 I was inspired by that and continued, started my own research in a, in a, in a sense that we wanted to 7:13 not develop optical wireless communications in the sense of TV remote controls where you basically have an intentional connection, you control your TV with an optical data link. Uh, so we wanted to build networks. 7:27 We wanted to build mobile networks that would allow mobility. 7:31 So like in your, in your Wi-Fi use cases, if you have your Wi-Fi handset, uh, your Wi-Fi phone, uh, you are, uh, on Zoom, you can walk around and you would not be disconnected. 7:42 And I wanted to have the same experience, but using light as a data bearer, and I therefore called it Li-Fi in analogy to Wi-Fi, really signifying that, that we want to build networks, not basically, um, point-to-point links. 8:00 And, and so I came up with that term, Li-Fi. 8:03 We build demonstrators, we build proof of concepts, and, um, as you said, we build a proof of concept 10 years ago that we showed at TED Global that, um, that, that attracted a lot of interest and we, we, we streamed, um, a, a video from an, an off-the-shelf, sort of $1 LED light bulb at that time. 8:21 And, and what's amazing now is what you're saying is if, if I hear you talking about this, you wanna make Li-Fi more affordable. 8:29 I think you wanna make it more, I think ultimately equitable, but I think what we have to look at is the spectrum. When we talk about we've gone from 4G to 5G- Yeah. 8:38 Now you're talking about 6G, and I think we're talking about resources. You know, we're talking about everything that en-enables, you know, broadband or whatever this layer is. 8:49 Talk to me about that and how Li-Fi is gonna be able to do this. Absolutely. 8:55 So I, I think what's very important here at this point is we have seen the auctions, the spectrum auctions in 3G, 4G, 5G, and there's been billions of dollars spent for a few megahertz of radio spectrum. 9:13 That's putting it mildly. Li-Fi- Mildly. I think we might be getting to the trillions now. [chuckles] Yeah. Uh, I think the, the mobile comms industry is a $1.5 trillion industry. 9:22 I, I think there, there is, there's huge amounts of, of money that's been spent for spectrum and, um, and that's very limited spectrum. So with Li-Fi, what we really have is 2,600 times 9:37 more spectrum than the entire radio spectrum. So I'm not talking about a 40 megahertz carrier. I f- I talk about 200-- 2,600 times than the entire spectrum of 300 gigahertz radio spectrum. That includes everything. 9:55 And, and that, that resource is in the infrared spectrum, but also in the visible light spectrum if we want also ultraviolet light. And, and it, it's free, it's unregulated. 10:05 No country in the world regulates the light spectrum, so it's a, it's a, it's a free resource and everybody can use it anywhere. 10:14 So that, that allows us to be equitable and, and allows us con- uh, building systems, the nervous system essentially everywhere where, where we need it. Um, that's, that's one major, major point. 10:26 Um, and if I may add one point here as well, slightly, slightly off track, but also important to realize is that 60% of the world's population are not connected to the internet. 10:39 So people that can't take part in e-commerce, they can't take part in all the things we, we are used to having. 10:47 A-and that creates disadvantages and the, the reason why pe- many people are not connected, they're living in remote areas, is because there's no business case to put a fiber into a remote village. 11:01 Uh, so we need to have something that allows even remote places to be connected at gigabit data rates that, that, that Li-Fi is capable of. 11:11 So that's why we need to build also free space optical communications, which essentially is a, uh, a fiber connection without the fiber. 11:21 So we are building, um, a connection, laser connection beaming the internet from a, from a tower, from a mast to a, to a house or to another tower, and then distributing the network. 11:32 And, and what's important is, um, we can do that with solar cells, and we can use solar panels that we 11:41 have to put on our homes in order to be more energy autonomous given, given the current situation, it's even more important to realize that. But these solar panels can fulfill two functions at the same time. 11:56 They can take the photons from the sun and convert it into energy, but they can also take the photons of a laser data transmitter and convert it into data. 12:05 So we, we've demonstrated in the lab sort of a, a three gigabit, uh, data reception with a, with a solar panel, with a solar cell.And, and the, the, the, the important thing is 12:16 it can be affordable because it can be l- the technology can be low complex. 12:21 We can get rid of, uh, some hardware elements which are very costly, such as beam acquisition and tracking, and make it very, very simple and therefore low cost and thereby, uh, building, building sort of mesh network and connecting the unconnected and, and, and allowing them to take part of the benefits of, of a digital society. 12:43 Well, that's what we need. I mean, we haven't seen that at this point, even on the, the consumer side, let alone seeing it on a, the industrial side. We talk about it, but are there something that you envision? 12:54 I mean, we've talked about this idea that we can be able to see that, which I think is very important because w- in order for this all to happen, you know, we talk about it, we at some point have to have some kind of common standard, some interoperability to make this happen. 13:09 Yeah. I mean, that's your vision. You and I have talked about the importance of that. Is that gonna help it happen that in order to achieve this, we have to have some interoperability as a standard to make this work? 13:20 For the Li-Fi indoor networking, um, I think we clearly need a standard because it, it attaches all consumer devices. 13:28 It attaches your smartphone, your, your smartwatch, uh, your smart fridge, your, all your smart devices at home, um, have to be connected with Li-Fi and, um... It, it's a simple, a simple case. 13:41 Somebody may develop the Li-Fi light bulb, so your light bulb that transmits gigabit of data, and somebody may develop the, uh, light antenna module that is integrated into a smartphone, but the light bulb has to co- it has to talk to the smartphone, and it has to follow therefore a common standard so that both companies can gear their development towards a common, common standard, which is so important in cellular, it's so important with Wi-Fi, and will be equally important with, with Li-Fi. 14:13 Uh, but the good news is, um, that there is a standard looming and a standard on the horizon in, in a half a year to a year within the IEEE family. 14:24 So the IEEE stands for the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers in the United States, and there's a very famous standard that the IEEE has developed is the Wi-Fi standard. 14:36 It is, is, runs under the label 802.11. And, um, interestingly now, there will be a new standard within the same family of Wi-Fi, which is a Li-Fi standard, which has the reference bb. 14:53 So we know ax is Wi-Fi 6 and there will be 802.11bb that will be a Li-Fi standard and that will be coming out and will be ratified in the first half of next year. 15:05 So we'll already see companies building pre-standard devices that would later then allow complete interoperability, um, the connection, interconnections between different ecosystem players in that, in that field, and that's so important. 15:22 So does this create a common nervous system, so to speak? What does interoperability mean then? If you have Wi-Fi, you have Li-Fi, what does this create then for the average consumer when they want products? 15:34 Because sometimes just because we have interoperability doesn't necessarily mean they talk to each other. 15:40 That, that, that's, that's important, but in an end-to-end scenario, it's, it's vitally important that the, the, the building blocks in between talk to each other and there's no friction in the system, if you want. 15:51 There's no sand in the, in the, in the gearbox. 15:55 So that's, that's important and, and the communications, uh, community has done a great job and will continue doing a great job, and we really have to recognize, and you mentioned the nervous system and, 16:06 uh, that, that, that, that, that all communication systems resemble, uh, the nervous system of our digital world. E-commerce, e-health, e-transport, digital twins, AR, VR, and autonomous systems, data centers. 16:23 These are only a few examples that are part of our digital world and make up the fabric that we live upon and, and in, in, in our private lives, in our business lives. And, and, and we know 16:37 that data connectivity as a nervous system relies on resources, and we know that the radio spectrum is too limited in order to build the future nervous system, to build everything that the, the 6G community talks about in terms of AR, VR, holographic displays, in terms of, um, the digital twin sort of, uh, scenarios. 16:59 And therefore, we have to build the nervous system based on a different paradigm and different kind of resources, and the, the optical spectrum is out there in order to deliver these resources for growing the nervous system towards a fully integrated network that allows sensing, communication, compute, control, robotics, so that, that really our cars in the future that are autonomous on our road are safe, um, and, and, and allow, and al- allow level four and five self-autonomous driving. 17:38 And, and, and you need [laughs] 17:40 like a human body, if your fingers won't be that sensitive, you wouldn't be able to do all the things we can do in this world, and we just, just want to make the machines similarly capable, and that's, that doesn't go without, without building lots of connections to cars, to airplanes, to drones, to under- underwater, um, remote-operated vehicles and, and also satellites and connecting satellites and satellites to ground. 18:05 So we, we are talking about, um, a, a huge, a huge undertaking, but a huge opportunity here. And we see the products to s- to, to basically deliver on that, uh, nervous system being cr- created as we speak. 18:19 So the really e- exciting thing that the consumers need to understand, 'cause we're consumers and businesses together, is that there, there's going to be this great opportunity to see what we could do in our personal lives and our professional lives, and see how Li-Fi is going to actually change our world from a bigger perspective. 18:36 It's not just gonna be what we do from connected devices, but how these connected devices will also impact the industrial side or the healthcare side or every... It, it, that nervous system is going to be- Yes... 18:49 it's, it's like a giant spider web from everything that we're talking about, and that's what we need to understand is that Li-Fi's gonna change our world in a different way than we can imagine right now.That is correct. 18:59 It's, it's, it's building exactly that, that interconnections between humans and machines, machines to machines and a- a- across a number of sectors. 19:09 You mentioned, um, uh, manufacturing and you mentioned automotive, but also at home and really bringing it down to, to the current, uh, situation where 19:20 if you have a family and, and have multiple users that want at the same time AR/VR on your Wi-Fi, it, it is really hard to, to deliver that seamlessly and, and also in, in with an experience that doesn't have any delays and that has high resolution d- displays. 19:38 So we, we really have to, have to unlock that, that capability, and Li-Fi is there to do exactly that. Well, we are running out of time. We didn't have a chance. 19:48 We've run actually longer than we're supposed to, but what would you want people to really know, uh, you know, that one tip or give them to say, "Here's where Li-Fi's coming," you know? Is it coming? 19:59 How long before we'll see it in the world, you know, when we're using it every day, everyday products, these kinds of things that we could all be a part of what this exciting movement that you have going on? 20:09 So we, we already see, uh, Li-Fi, uh, products. There's companies out there like PureLiFi that, that have light antenna modules that are integratable into, into smartphones and have been integrated. 20:20 But let me also say a few things a- a- about, about some general misconceptions, which I hopefully have the opportunity to, to take head-on here is, um, Li-Fi requires a line of sight link. 20:33 Uh, and, and, and people say that Li-Fi can be blocked by just putting your hand in front of the link. 20:38 That is in, in a sense true, but it is also true that we can build very sensitive re- detectors that would allow data reception even in a, in a blocked scenario or in a re- when the light comes off a wall. 20:51 A- and also we build spatial diversity systems that you have d- multiple Li-Fi transceivers in your phone, one at the backside, one at the front side, and if one is blocked, you have still the other one that would receive, uh, data. 21:04 So we build, uh, fairly robust systems with Li-Fi. 21:08 It also works under strong sunlight because we have developed and patented modulation techniques that are robust to ambient light, so it works outdoor as well as indoors. 21:19 It works underwater, unlike radio, so you can co- uh, connect un, un- uh, remote operated vehicles under- underwater. But what is really, really important is, is its security property because you can... 21:32 First of all, light doesn't go through opaque walls, so it stays within the room. It doesn't go outside the room, which is great. But also 21:41 if you have a laser beam, you have a beam that points in a certain direction, and you can have a bu- slightly broader beam, so covering sort of larger area, but everything outside that area, everyone outside that area won't be able to access the data links. 21:56 So really that directionality is a key feature. You would argue that you can build directional RF communications. 22:03 That's true, but there is always in RF side lobes that go into different directions rather than the main beam, and that pro- uh, that is a security vulnerability that Li-Fi doesn't have. 22:16 And I also should say one very important point here is on data density. We talked about data rates, and we talked about terabit per second data rates, 22:26 but it is an important metric, but there's a second very important metric as well is, is data density. So if you're at home in your living room and you have, say, 10 people that want to get access to, to Wi-Fi, 22:42 and let's assume your Wi-Fi delivers one gigabit, which is a good headline number, but usually what happens is that the 10 people in that room have to share that one, uh, gigabit, so they actually get 100 megabit. 22:59 So it's much lower than the, the, the, the, the peak data rate. 23:03 Whereas with Li-Fi, because of the directiona- directionality of the beam, imagine a, a laser pointer, uh, in, in a sense, that, that's what it, it does, but slightly broader beam. 23:14 But essentially everybody could have its own beam, and therefore there's no contention. 23:19 So with Li-Fi, everybody would get one gigabit per second in a scenario, can get one gigabit in, in such a scenario, which is for a user 10 times better experience, although the headline one gigabit is the same in both systems. 23:34 And that's a very important factor in, in Li-Fi that many people overlook when, when they look at it. 23:40 Um, a- and, and, and lastly, what I want to say is we are currently now in research in the Li-Fi Research and Development Center, we are currently building really terabit per second optical wireless networks that do exactly what I've just described, giving users their private beam based on a multi-beam approach, on a grid of beam approach, uh, and, and, and, and allowing also mobility and, and allowing sort of, uh, blockage of light. 24:08 So these are very important, all these very important, um, facts and I, I was hoping to, to convey and, and thanks for, for, for giving me the opportunity here, uh, Peggy. Harold, it-- these are exciting times. 24:19 These are very exciting times. 24:20 If you looked at a timeframe for adopting all of these things in the home right now and having us all be able to do things externally and internally, what's your greatest hope for all of this right now? 24:31 What, what are you saying we'll be able to do? 'Cause we know we're doing some things in the Living Lab. We're gonna be showing all of this off in the Living Lab. Tell us what- Yeah... 24:38 you're most excited about with all of this. So I, I'm really, really excited about the fact that Li-Fi is already adopted. 24:46 Um, there's, there's examples in, in, in, uh, in, in the, in the defense, uh, vertical where the US Army is buying Li-Fi kits in, in masses. So it, it, it is, it is not a... We have left the, the, the station in a sense. 24:59 There's-- We are beyond the trial period. Beyond the trial. Yeah. So that's what's exciting. We are beyond the trial. It's now a trial anymore. Yeah. 25:05 So we, we, we, we have, we have, we have pure, real systems, and I'm delighted.Uh, to, to, uh, to bring Li-Fi into homes and, and, and also showcasing it, its viability there and, and, and with, with the, with the companies such as pureLiFi, and we will see that products for mass adoption will be out there in, in the next, in the next couple of years. 25:30 Do you see yourself now surpassing what Wi-Fi's done? Do you see yourself surpassing what Matter's hoping to do? 25:38 All these other standards out there, do you end up seeing yourself at some point saying, "We're going to be the number one standard," you know, in an- you know, in, in... 25:47 It's like the nervous system you described in the home. Do you see yourself as Li-Fi being that? So Li-Fi, I mean, clearly radio will always be there. So if your phone is in a pocket, you need radio. 25:59 So it, it, it's never basically, um, exclusive. One or the other. So it will be- Okay... 26:03 combined, but, but Li-Fi will become the dominant bearer in the future because of its huge spectrum once, once we see really the adoption in first consumer devices and, and this is not really far off to see consumer devices equipped with, with Li-Fi capability. 26:21 So what we have to get the consumer to understand is when it comes to security, this is where you need to go. You need to go to Li-Fi when you want the most security. 26:30 So I think we have to separate understanding Wi-Fi versus this or, or what other things in their mind. When it comes to security, they really need to be looking at Li-Fi. 26:39 When they wanted things speed and, and expedience, they need to be looking at Li-Fi. They need to be looking at specific things that Li-Fi can give them that others cannot. Is, is that the way... 26:49 I'm trying to pare it down a little bit to help them understand. That, that's very important. Li-Fi is, is a unique selling point of, of, of Li-Fi and, and that, that Li- and Wi-Fi wouldn't be able to match clearly. 27:01 And, and you mentioned data rates as well, but I also would like to say is if you want to have many devices connected to the internet at the same time in a, in a, in a room environment at home, and, and then you don't want to have the, the radio spectrum be shared among these devices, that's also the time when you should go to Li-Fi unlocking sort of huge data densities, uh, with, with Li-Fi as well. 27:25 That, that's another area where, where, where you, where, where Li-Fi really plays off. Harold Haas, professor at the University of Strathclyde, you've been amazing. I love spending time with you. 27:35 Where can our listeners go to get more information on what you're doing? 27:39 There's two TED Talks out there, um, one that, where we use sort of, uh, LED light bulbs as data transmitters and the other one where we use solar panels as data receivers. These are more general resources. 27:50 But there's a-- if people want to understand more of what we do in the Li-Fi Research and Development Center at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow in the United Kingdom, they should go to the website, uh, simply going li-fi, in, in one word, hyphen center.com. 28:05 This is where they find the latest information about our projects such as the Terabit Wireless Networking Project and other, other hopefully, uh, valuable resources. 28:14 [upbeat music] All right, listeners, that's all the time we have for this segment. You can share your thoughts with us on Twitter @connectedworld. 28:20 Please check out our show website at thepeggysmemmley show.com or our website at connectedworld.com. And don't forget to check out our new podcast, Project Sustainability at pspgreen.libsyn.com. All right. 28:33 This is The Peggy Smedley Show, your voice for our connected world, and remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. We'll be right back after this commercial break.
