TOMORROW
With the relentless pace of global negative financial news of recent weeks, and it's effects being felt hard in a sharply lower technology sector, it's easy to forget how cool technology can be in the long-term. That thought came to mind this morning, when I read this piece titled "Lightbulbs could replace WiFi hotspots"...here're the highlights*:
"Boston University's College of Engineering is launching a program, under a National Science Foundation grant, to develop the next generation of wireless communications technology based on visible light instead of radio waves.
Researchers expect to piggyback data communications capabilities on low-power light emitting diodes, or LEDs, to create "Smart Lighting" that would be faster and more secure than current network technology.
This initiative aims to develop an optical communication technology that would make an LED light the equivalent of a Wi-Fi access point."
"...A wireless device within sight of an enabled LED could send and receive data though the air - initially at speeds in the 1 to 10 megabit per second range - with each LED serving as an access point to the network. Such a network would have the potential to offer users greater bandwidth than current RF technology."
Such a development could have lots of unexpected applications both indoors and out. The article goes into how these might evolve.
Another piece on the same topic provides more details on the folks working in this area:
"This initiative, known as the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center (http://smartlighting.bu.edu), is part of an $18.5 million, multi-year NSF program awarded to Boston University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of New Mexico to develop the optical communication technology that would make an LED light the equivalent of a WiFi access point."
Obviously, this stuff is still in the labs, and a long way from commercial products. But it's nice to be reminded that technology can do better things for us over the longer-term, for less money and resources.
* image unrelated to referenced article.
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