LiFi Experimental Testbed
The Radio frequency Spectrum is getting exhausted and seeing severe congestion due to contention and interference. Light Fidelity (LiFi) is emerging as a complementary technique using intensity modulating LED lights to realise networked wireless system, a light-based WiFi.
There are various compelling LiFi application use cases that can combine the lighting needs and data communication in applications such as indoor broadband access to augment WiFi bandwidth, VLC hotspots in smart home environment, secure communication that is free from eavesdropping, mobile phone assisted indoor navigation in shopping malls or airports, signboards, traffic signals, hospitals, vehicle to vehicle and event of advertisement/display etc.,
ERNET India has initiated internally funded LiFi pilot project to be executed jointly with IIT Madras for the duration of 2 years (2017-19). The objective is to study LiFi as an alternate communication technology and perform visible light communication experiments and explore LiFi opportunities in various deployment scenarios such as smart city application.
ERNET has setup LiFi internet evaluation kit from leading vendor for the purpose of demonstration of LiFi capabilities, evaluation and Indoor performance experiments. As part of indoor experiment, measurement of power received at difference coordinates & outage analysis on a different distance was tested in Line of sight (LOS) and measurement of outage analysis based on the reflection of colors was tested in Non Line of Sight (NLOS) and above test results was published in APAN44.
LiFi Testbed setup LiFi Experimental setup for LOS Test
Based on the LiFi demonstration and initial experiments, a generic LiFi experimental testbed will be setup to study research challenges, evaluate various deployment scenario, development of open source general purpose platform and demonstrate specific real field deployments in IoT, healthcare, education, transport and indoor positioning etc.