The World is Getting a Global LiFi Standard

IEEE Task Force Works on Global LiFi Standard for Light: The new guidelines for LiFi are to enhance IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi standard

2019 marks a year of LiFi gaining international support for adoption and commitment for a Global LiFi Standard. At pureLiFi, we’ve experienced adoption rates growing exponentially. Our global map of users grows month on month as we add new customers, use cases and territories to our list of LiFi adoptors.

Today IEEE has announced the formation of the 802.11bb Task Force who will develop and ratify the Global standard for LiFi, ensuring LiFi is integrated into every device and every light.

pureLiFi’s very own Nikola Serafimovski has been chairing the efforts developing this standard, and his contributions can be seen here and here.

In this announcement, Nikola speaks about the importance of LiFi to the future and sustainability of wireless communications and why 802.11 is the right home for a LiFi standard.

“Li-Fi is the future of communications, with the potential to become a real mass-market technology,” says IEEE Member Nikola Serafimovski, the task group’s chair. “But to have mass-market growth, a standard is needed. Similar to what wireless communications development went through, Li-Fi must go through it as well.”

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“IEEE 802.11 has developed the world’s single most successful wireless communication standard,” Serafimovski says. “According to the Cisco Virtual Network, wireless data sent through Wi-Fi accounted for over 54 percent of all wireless communications in 2017.

“Li-Fi is another tool in a set that already happens to be pretty good. It will provide that complementary capacity that Wi-Fi and other wireless communications need to create a fully connected digital society.”

There are some differences between what can be done with Li-Fi and what can be done with the lower part of the radio spectrum, he says.

“It is always a matter of using the right technology to solve the right problem,” he says, “and Li-Fi can meaningfully help to deliver ubiquitous indoor coverage for the mass market, bringing data wherever there is light. Indeed, by some accounts Li-Fi may broaden the frequency range by 1,000 times.”

To read the full announcement visit TheInstitute.ieee.org