LiFi: past, present and future

Inventor of LiFi Harald Haas talks to Philip Mason about the origins of the solution, and why he believes it will solve the problem of finite RF spectrum in a data-hungry world

As recent readers of Land Mobile will know, the digital communications sector is currently in a state of high anticipation, waiting for the maturation and widespread roll-out of potentially transformative technologies such as 5G, AI and so on.

As disruptive as these solutions will undoubtedly prove, however, perhaps the most intriguing of all is LiFi, which enables users to communicate using the visible light spectrum rather than radio frequencies. Not only is this – at least as far as your correspondent is concerned – pretty clever, it may also prove to be the single most elegant, not to say useful, answer to a pre-existing problem since the Babel Fish.

The inventor of LiFi, as well as founder of attendant technology company pureLiFi, is Harald Haas. Discussing the origins of the solution, along with the rationale behind its initial development, he says: “I started my career at Siemens’ mobile communication network, leading a research project around the year 2000, that was geared essentially towards developing a patent portfolio for what is now 4G/LTE.