Harald Haas: Forget Wi-Fi. Meet the new Li-Fi Internet-2

Harald Haas: Forget Wi-Fi. Meet the new Li-Fi Internet-2

Now what I would like to do first is switch on the light, and I'll simply, only switch on the light, for a moment, and what you'll notice is that the instrument jumps to the right. So the solar cell, for a moment, is harvesting energy from this artificial light source. If I turn it off, we see it drops. I turn it on ... So we harvest energy with the solar cell.

But next I would like to activate the streaming of the video. And I've done this by pressing this button. So now this LED lamp here is streaming a video by changing the brightness of the LED in a very subtle way, and in a way that you can't recognize with your eye, because the changes are too fast to recognize. But in order to prove the point, I can block the light of the solar cell. So first you notice the energy harvesting drops and the video stops as well. If I remove the blockage, the video will restart.

And I can repeat that. So we stop the transmission of the video and energy harvesting stops as well. So that is to show that the solar cell acts as a receiver.

But now imagine that this LED lamp is a street light, and there's fog. And so I want to simulate fog, and that's why I brought a handkerchief with me.

And let me put the handkerchief over the solar cell. First you notice the energy harvested drops, as expected, but now the video still continues. This means, despite the blockage, there's sufficient light coming through the handkerchief to the solar cell, so that the solar cell is able to decode and stream that information, in this case, a high-definition video.

What's really important here is that a solar cell has become a receiver for high-speed wireless signals encoded in light, while it maintains its primary function as an energy-harvesting device. That's why it is possible to use existing solar cells on the roof of a hut to act as a broadband receiver from a laser station on a close by hill, or indeed, lamp post.

And It really doesn't matter where the beam hits the solar cell. And the same is true for translucent solar cells integrated into windows, solar cells integrated into street furniture, or indeed, solar cells integrated into these billions of devices that will form the Internet of Things. Because simply, we don't want to charge these devices regularly, or worse, replace the batteries every few months.

As I said to you, this is the first time I've shown this in public. It's very much a lab demonstration, a prototype. But my team and I are confident that we can take this to market within the next two to three years. And we hope we will be able to contribute to closing the digital divide, and also contribute to connecting all these billions of devices to the Internet. And all of this without causing a massive explosion of energy consumption -- because of the solar cells, quite the opposite.

Om Namah Shivay