Broadband is passé. A light bulb holds the key to faster internet!
Yes, you read it right; a light bulb that used to light up your home is going to light up your virtual home very soon.
In today’s day and age, everything is going through a rapid transformation and we are witnessing things that we never imagined possible, or did we?
Well, right from automobiles to medicines and even laws (you have no ******* idea what kinds of laws exist in the world), change has established itself as the only constant and our very own all encompassing phenomenon the ‘internet’ is no exception.
We all are consumed by internet and vice-versa. Be it the free Wi-Fi at the nearby coffee shop or fished from the nerdy guy next door, or the fast but always nagging office broadband. But, regardless of kind speed has always played spoilsport. As millions of people with billions of devices connect to the internet, it is getting increasingly difficult to latch onto a reliable signal.
But blaming radio waves is not the solution as they are too overloaded with data. The solution lies in moving over and German physicist, Harald Haas has just done that.
A professor of engineering at Edinburgh University, Haas has long been studying ways to communicate electronic data signals, designing modulation techniques that pack more data onto existing networks. But his latest work leaps beyond wires and radio waves to transmit data via an LED bulb that glows and darkens faster than the human eye can see. It’s the same idea behind infrared remote controls, but far more powerful. He calls the process “data through illumination” and his invention as ‘D-Light’
The D-Light can produce data rates faster than 10 megabits per second. He envisions a future where data for laptops, smart phones, and tablets is transmitted through the light in a room. He says “It should be so cheap that it’s everywhere. Using the visible light spectrum, which comes for free, you can piggy-back existing wireless services on the back of lighting equipment.”
Imagine the gargantuan potential this technology has. Benefits would spread across realms and beyond boundaries of accessibility and costs. All this with the inherent benefit of security, since if you can’t see the light, you can’t access the data.
But everything said and done, the question is -
Will this see the light of the day?
