Transcript 0:00 Now Li-Fi could also potentially be used in industrial settings, power plants, petrochemical factories, and smart cities. You name it, it could be there. And yes, now what are we seeing? Even the military. 0:14 PureLiFi recently announced a multi-million dollar deal to supply the US military with its optical wireless communication system. 0:27 [upbeat music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation, with your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:43 Hello, listeners, and welcome to today's edition of The Peggy Smedley Show. As always, I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. Today on my show, I want to share with you the success of a really dear friend of mine. 0:54 It's a big announcement that's going to bring together wireless communication technology and the military to could be unleashing more reliable wireless communications with greater security. 1:06 And we all know as well that when technology starts in the military, it usually grows roots in other vertical markets as well. 1:16 The impact of this announcement could have very far-reaching implications, and I'm gonna dig into that pretty much in this first segment. But first, let's talk about some of the guests I have on the show. 1:27 I'm gonna be talking with Dennis Holzer, Executive Director of Powerhouse Alliance, and then I'm gonna wrap up the show with Junaid Ali, consultant at Haystack Analytics. So let's get started. 1:40 We've got a lot to talk about today. Harald Haas reached out to me because he wanted to share a really big story with all of you, my listeners. 1:49 His Li-Fi has recently been adopted by the military, which is just really exciting. 1:55 So for the first segment today, I want to take a couple of minutes to reflect on his past, to talk about the importance of Li-Fi today and how it's being used in the military, and how maybe some of my musings about potential impact for the future. 2:13 For those of you who might not know Harald and what Harald Haas has been doing, he is a university professor at the University of Edinburgh, and he has recognized a problem and figured out the pieces to overcome it. 2:30 And what came out was the invention of Li-Fi, a term coined by Haas himself. 2:37 Li-Fi is a short term for light fidelity, and it is a wireless communication technology that leverages visible light for the high speed transmission of data between devices. 2:53 Now, here is what makes it so impressive. Let's walk through technically what really is Li-Fi and how it's different from when we hear Li-Fi- Mm... light fidelity, versus when we think about Wi-Fi. 3:05 Walk us through what it really is. Yeah. Uh, uh, very brief. So yes, it's wireless communications using light, light that's around us in, in the form of LED light. 3:15 And basically what we've done is we have enabled LED light not only to illuminate, but also to send data at very high speed. 3:23 So we change the intensity of the light at a very fast rate that the human eye wouldn't be able to recognize the, the flicker, if you want, but the detectors, which are photo detectors, would recognize the changes in the light intensity, and that changes have data encoded. 3:39 And we've found ways to encode data in a very efficient manner to send very many data per second through these light bulbs, these, these sort of off-the-shelf LED lights. 3:50 So using lights, but not only using a light to send data to one receiver, to one smartphone, but to send data to multiple receivers, and, and multiple receivers then also send data back in the uplink via infrared light, also a light channel. 4:05 So we have a bidirectional communication, and then also we allow devices to move. 4:10 So we have, like our smartphones, we move through the aisle, we, we move through the corridors, through the rooms, and the connection must not be interrupted, so our Skype session should be maintained. 4:22 So that's why we network these lights and build complete wireless networks by light. 4:28 And that's the fundamental difference to what has been around for a long time is visible light communication, which is primarily the connection between a transmitter and a receiver, which are often very static. 4:40 But what we do is we build real wireless networks based on lights, and every light bulb is an access point, is a base station, if you want, that is communicating. 4:48 So it's bringing the cellular radio stations, the radio towers that you see outside and in the streets, bringing these radio towers into our homes, into our luminaires, and use the light as a barrier of, of high-speed data communication. 5:01 And four different colors, uh, 15 gigabit per second with a light source that costs less than a pound. So it's really using these off-the-shelf components to build high-speed wireless networks using, using light. 5:16 Li-Fi leverages the visible light spectrum, ultraviolet and infrared radiation to transmit data. 5:25 It is similar to Wi-Fi, but the difference here is, of course, is that Wi-Fi relies on radio frequency to transmit data, while Li-Fi relies on the light emitted from LED lamps to transmit data. 5:43 With Li-Fi having initially come onto the scene back in 2011, Haas has long had a keen interest in optical wireless communications, hybrid optical wireless, and radio frequency communications. 5:57 His interest led him to co-found PureLiFi.Now, there are a number of advantages of using light waves instead of radio waves. 6:07 For one, there is a higher bandwidth, faster transmission speeds, and actually the ability to work in areas that are susceptible to electromagnetic interference, like hospitals or inside airplanes. 6:22 Of course, Li-Fi has its limitations, just as Wi-Fi does, and we've talked about this, uh, on other shows, but it requires light, so enabling public internet access through Li-Fi would require constant light sources. 6:38 In some cases, that is not plausible. It's also limited by physical barriers, such as light cannot penetrate walls. But Wi-Fi has its limitations too, of course. 6:51 What is so exciting here now is that we have choices, and this is what I wanna talk about, and when we have choices, that opens up many more opportunities. 7:01 In 2019, PureLiFi launched a gigabyte components design for integration into mobile phones and consumer electronics, meaning this technology could ultimately end up in the hands of consumers. 7:17 Now, Li-Fi could also potentially be used in industrial settings, power plants, petrochemical factories, and smart cities. You name it, it could be there. And yes, now what are we seeing? Even the military. 7:31 PureLiFi recently announced a multimillion dollar deal to supply the US military with its optical wireless communication system. 7:41 Now, this deal with the United States Army, Europe, and Africa is the company's first large-scale deployment of Li-Fi technology, which I think is really cool when you think about the potential here. 7:54 PureLiFi says following an initial pilot stage that took place in 2019, now its Kitefin system will be deployed in the US military real, tactical, and strategic environments. 8:09 So Kitefin is designed for defense according to the company, and what I like here is it's an optical wireless communication system using Li-Fi without radio frequencies. 8:21 So this is key in defense environments, and here radio frequencies can use many challenges. Mainly, radio frequencies can be detected and targeted. 8:33 Kitefin just eliminates that risk, and it cannot be detected outside of its defined cone of coverage. 8:41 So Kitefin is also secure, building in the internet a physical security of containable light communications, and it can also be deployed very rapidly, and that's what we like when we think about the military. 8:53 So ultimately, this can save time, money, and lives on each deployment. Now, I would call that a win-win-win, wouldn't you? 9:02 So this is with the military consists of thousands of certified office and field deployable Li-Fi units. Li-Fi is resistant to eavesdropping through walls or tent, uh, canvas. 9:16 I think it's highly resistant to even close range jamming attempts, and this is what I was learning about this, which is kind of interesting if you think about the military overall. 9:26 So the company believes this military deployment is an infection point in its adoption of Li-Fi, and I would kind of agree if you think about what they've described to me because, as we all know, the military is often an incubator for innovation, and what happens there is very likely it'll trickle into other areas of our lives, and that's what I think is the potential impact could rival that of many more conventional technologies like cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth. 9:59 We've seen it over and over again. 10:01 So although this brings me to my opinion today, which makes me think about Li-Fi as another option we need to consider alongside of Wi-Fi and these other wireless communication technologies. 10:14 One will not replace the other, which is really neat because it opens up the door for a lot of opportunities. I envision a world where all of this will be used as complementary technologies. 10:26 Each has its strength, and I think its limitations. 10:29 By using each, we could embark on a journey to bring more connectivity in our businesses, in our cities, everything around us, and I think that's what makes technology really exciting because we're able to use it in places where we need it most, opportunities where we can endeavor more and more strengths and, and, and envision a world that in... 10:50 You know, it's limitless. So I... Here's what I really want us all to think about. Here's my tip for today. 10:57 Consider the industry or maybe even industries you do business in, and I've talked about this before when we think about other technologies. Could Li-Fi potentially be a good solution for that? 11:09 And you might not have thought about it before, but now that the military's thinking about it, would you be thinking about it today? 11:16 We see it working with the military, and now you think, "Well, if the military considers this powerful, would it something you be considering it?" And I think where else might we tap into this? 11:28 The use cases are really endless, as I always like to say, when we think about and we think outside of the square peg that we're always in. Li-Fi could help guide sight-impaired passengers on public transit systems. 11:42 That's really exciting. It could measure customer journey times through supermarket aisles. Kind of interesting, right? It could help connect our classrooms. 11:53 It could be used in manufacturing f-facilities for condition-based monitoring. It could enable data transmission in transportation infrastructure. 12:04 It could possibly even enable vehicle-to-vehicle communication with Li-Fi enabled headlights. I mean, think about what we're describing here. I love the opportunities in hospitals, too. 12:19 I mean, we all know wireless data connectivity is challenging within healthcare organizations, but think about this. Li-Fi can be a different solution to enhance operational efficiency. 12:31 We need to work together to improve connectivity in our communities and in our cities. Just think about the opportunities. They're truly endless here, and Li-Fi just might be one way to do that. 12:44 And I'm really excited that a friend came to share all this great success he's having and, you know, we got to know Harold really well when we did our video on him on What It Takes, and if you haven't seen that wonderful YouTube video, go up and check it out. 12:59 We did this great in-depth video with him on What It Takes, so sh-check that out if you haven't. Uh, it's a really wonderful, uh, video. All right. 13:06 So we're out of time for this segment, so share your thoughts with us on social media at connectedwmag, and we're gonna take a quick short break, but check out our website at connectedworld.com or our show website at thepeggysemidyshow.com. 13:19 And we'll be right back after this quick commercial break. As always, this is The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. 13:26 And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. We'll be right back. 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