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Musa Unmehopa, Chair of the HomeGrid Forum LiFi Task Force, Shares His Highlights of The Li-Fi Conference 2022
Chair of the HomeGrid Forum LiFi Task Force
HomeGrid Forum released a video where Musa Unmehopa, Chair of the HomeGrid Forum LiFi Task Force, talks about the highlights of the recent LiFi Conference 2022 edition.
Mr Musa is also the Head of Wireless Standards & Regulations at Signify. Prior to joining Philips Lighting in 2013, he worked for Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, and Alcatel-Lucent. Musa has held senior leadership roles in various standards bodies, trade organizations and industry consortia, including chairman of the Technical Plenary of the Open Mobile Alliance, vice-chairman of the Board of the Zigbee Alliance, and Secretary-General of the Zhaga Consortium. He also served on the boards of The Connected Lighting Alliance, the Emerge Alliance, and the Parlay Group, and is an advisor to several technology start-ups. Author of two technology books, Musa has been an invited keynote speaker and panellist at various industry events. His publications include numerous papers in technical journals and conferences. He holds two patents. Musa received a BSc. and MSc. degree in computer science from Twente University and MBA degrees from TIAS Business School and University of Bradford School of Management.
In the video, he stated the following statements:
“Very recently on June 28, we participated in the LiFi conference in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, which is the premiere event for LiFi, the LiFi industry where all the major players from the industry come together from all geographies. And in all stakeholder segments. It was a great one-day event, I enjoyed it very much, that we had the opportunity to meet with some of our friends from the LiFi space, as well as make new friends and branch out to other industry segments. I think the coverage was great. We had speakers from the academic and research environments. But interestingly, where previously, we talked a lot about breakthroughs in research and results, fantastic results in our labs, this year's conference had a lot of focus on companies actually deploying the technology and using it for real-life problems that they face in their businesses and environments. And this is really, to me, a signal that the technology is maturing, that the industry is picking up, and that we're ready for even further growth. And I think that's an excellent point in time where more companies interested in technology can join the ecosystem, and start contributing to even furthering the technology and growing the market. So for me, it was a fantastic event. And I'm also looking forward to next year's rendition.”
“I think interoperability is key to market enablement. It is often important, especially in the communications industry, that products from multiple companies can work together because that means that end customers don't lock themselves into a single manufacturer. It means that end customers can mix and match the best of breed from all companies out there. They can choose their access points from one manufacturer and their endpoints from another manufacturer. They can also choose a multi-sourcing strategy from multiple vendors. So, they are not dependent on a single supply chain. All these aspects are very important. Now, interoperability doesn't come for free, it requires hard work to get it done. And the HomeGrid Forum is tooling up a certification and interoperability certification programme to ensure that products from multiple manufacturers that are all standards-based can work together. And for this, we are introducing a test specification and a certification programme that will be based on extensive and rigorous testing. It will use third-party independent test houses that will validate the conformance implementations, we will use automated toolsets to further increase the quality and companies that pass the certification process will be issued a mark and interoperability mark or a logo which can be used by consumers to identify Hey, this is a not only a conformance compliant product but also an interoperable product. And if it can work together with another product that bears the same interoperability mark. and we've seen it throughout the industry, we know it from WiFi. And we know it from other products that we use in our homes in our daily lives. That this is really a good mechanism to increase the confidence level of consumers, but also of large companies who have procurement processes. And they're more comfortable procuring standards-based and interoperable products than proprietary products from a single manufacturer.”
“The LiFi conference, which was held last month was a great opportunity to learn from other stakeholders in the industry. So, I had the opportunity to present but while there, I also took the opportunity to listen to all the other speakers. And there's a couple, a couple of them that jumped out to me. Particularly, I liked the presentation from MaxLinear, Marcos Martínez, who gave the perspective of a silicon vendor on how the LiFi market is evolving and how it can grow even further with the support of silicon vendors. That to me provided a lot of interesting insights. What I also found interesting was the presentation from Cisco, certainly a very large player in the networking equipment market. And if they start paying attention to the technology, I think that's another sign that LiFi is maturing. There were some very interesting presentations. I remember a presentation focusing on the economic aspects of rolling out these systems. Ultimately, technology is great and can do fantastic stuff, but you need to pay for it, and it needs to solve a real-life business problem. So, these economic considerations are very important. And as always, I liked the presentation from the Light Communications Alliance, which is a sister organisation, where many of the LiFi companies come together to drive the development of the market. There are many more that I forget at present, but I believe online videos and many of these presentations are available. And, I would encourage everyone to take a moment to look at these at your leisure and share with your colleagues and networks.”
“If I were to take a moment to look forward and engage into my crystal ball, I think some of the next steps that we may be anticipating are the miniaturisation of the technology and the miniaturisation of the power consumption. With the purpose of integrating the technology into the devices that we use on a day-to-day basis. Think about laptops, tablets and mobile handsets. I think that's going to be the next stage in the growth of the market, where we really see the inflection point and the hockey stick curve beginning for LiFi. It's a goal that we all aim for. And I think as we now see the early use cases and the early adoption, we need to branch out into more use cases and increase the volumes and I think device integration could be a fantastic enabler to make that a realisation. And I'm hoping that in a year from now, we look back at the year and see some initial steps in that direction and that will be really exciting to see.”
You can also watch the video below:
HomeGrid Forum
According to their website, HomeGrid Forum (HGF) is an industry alliance formed to support the development and deployment of a unified coaxial, phone line, powerline, and plastic optical fibre home networking technology called G.hn (Gigabit Home Networking). G.hn technology is based on standards developed by the UN’s International Telecommunications Union – Telecom (ITU-T) standards development organization.
HomeGrid Certification ensures compliance and interoperability (C&I) of silicon and systems through plugfests and rigorous C&I testing. A logo is issued for certified systems’ packaging and documentation of G.hn-based systems. HGF Certification ensures that retail customers and Service Providers have confidence in, and great satisfaction with all HGF G.hn Certified Certified products.
HomeGrid Forum members comprise an eco-system covering all aspects of the technology from Retailers to Service Providers, Utilities to Smart Grid think tanks, System Developers to Test Houses and Silicon Companies.
HomeGrid currently has four workgroups: a Clean Tech/Smart Grid/Smart Energy workgroup focused on in-home energy management and utility Distribution Automation and AMI applications for G.hn, a G.hn Contributions workgroup that continuously works to develop advanced enhancements for wired home networking, a Compliance & Interoperability workgroup, and a Marketing workgroup focused on promoting all HomeGrid Certified Products and technologies.
The purpose of HomeGrid Forum is to:
Lead the work within the ITU-T to continuously expand G.hn, through a sustained effort to improve and extend this advanced home networking technology for any in-home wiring (coaxial cable, phone line, powerline and plastic optical fiber).
Encourage and evangelize the adoption and widespread deployments of G.hn by Service Providers and through Retail channels.
Provide a clear migration path for all legacy wired technologies to G.hn, where coexistence and G.hn’s ability to work over any wire type enables Service Providers to extend the life of their existing network investments while increasing coverage, robustness, and throughput in the home.
Maintain a comprehensive compliance and interoperability program to promote an ecosystem of compliant silicon and interoperable products based on the ITU-T G.hn standards.
Li-Fi Conference 2022
The Li-Fi Conference 2022 Edition was a great success. Li Fi Tech News will very soon write articles on the topics treated at the Conference.
What is LiFi?
LiFi, also known as "Light Fidelity" is a wireless optical networking technology, which uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to transmit data. In 2011, professor Harald Haas made a LiFi demonstration at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Global Talk on Visible Light Communication (VLC).
VLC uses light as a medium to deliver high-speed communication like Wi-Fi and complies with the IEEE standard IEEE 802.15.7. The IEEE 802.15.7 is a high-speed, bidirectional, and fully networked wireless communication technology-based standard similar to Wi-Fi's IEEE 802.11.
How does LiFi work?
LiFi is a high speed, bidirectional, and fully networked wireless communication of data using light. LiFi constitutes of several light bulbs that form a wireless network.
When an electrical current goes through to a LED light bulb, a stream of light (photons) emits from the lamp. LED bulbs are semiconductor devices, which means that the brightness of the light flowing through them can change at extremely high speeds. The signal is sent by modulating the light at different rates. The signal can then be received by a detector that interprets the changes in light intensity (the signal) as data. Also when the LED is ON, you transmit a digital 1, and when it is OFF, you transmit a 0.
LiFi Benefits
The primary benefits of LiFi are as follows:
• Security: Provides entirely secure access. Where there is no light there is no data.
• Safety: Does not produce electromagnetic radiation and does not interfere with existing electronic systems.
• Localisation: Allows localisation due to the small coverage area of LiFi access point - localisation can be used for very precise asset tracking.
• Data density: Provides ubiquitous high-speed wireless access that offers substantially greater data density (data rate per unit area) than RF through high bandwidth reuse.
Credit to Oledcomm
LiFi Applications
LiFi can be used for so many applications and the list is increasing every year. You can read our updated list of Li-Fi applications at the following link:
Credit to pureLiFi
LiFi Systems Reviews by LiFi Tech News
OLEDCOMM LIFIMAX KIT REVIEW - ONE YEAR IN
We reviewed the LiFiMax kit produced by the leading French LiFi company Oledcomm. We bought this LiFi kit system at the end of 2020. After over a year of use, we decided to write a review of this LiFi system. We looked briefly at the profile of Oledcomm, a brief history of the LiFiMax system, the Kit box contents, some testing and performance results of this LiFi system, the customer experience and our own verdict (the good and the bad points) of the LiFiMax kit.
You can read the review on this link:
https://www.lifitn.com/blog/lifimaxreview
SIGNIFY TRULIFI 6002.1 STARTER KIT SYSTEM REVIEW
We also reviewed the Trulifi 6002.1 starter kit produced by Signify, the world leader in lighting for professionals, consumers and lighting for the Internet of Things. We got this LiFi kit system with the help of PCDSI and Signify around August 2021. In a similar fashion done with our previous review of the LiFiMax kit a few months ago, we will look briefly at the profile of Signify, a brief history of the Trulifi 6002.1 kit, the Kit box contents, some testing and performance results of this LiFi system, the customer experience and our own verdict (the good points and the bad points) of the Trulifi 6002.1 kit.
You can read the review on this link:
https://www.lifitn.com/blog/trulifi6002review
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