MSIT 650: Research Report on the Future of Communication Devices

This report explores the future of communication devices, addressing the limitations of current Wi-Fi technology and proposing Li-Fi (light fidelity) as a viable alternative. It begins by outlining the working principles of Wi-Fi, its advantages, and the challenges it faces due to increasing data traffic and limited spectrum availability. The report then introduces Li-Fi, a visible light communication technology, detailing its working principle, potential applications, and benefits for future communication devices, including enhanced security and support for 5G research. The document concludes by emphasizing the potential of Li-Fi to revolutionize data transmission and meet the growing demands of wirelessly connected devices.

Running head: FUTURE OF COMMUNICATION DEVICES
Future of Communication Devices
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Executive summary
The following report is prepared based on the future of communication devices with
respect of connecting more efficiently with the outer world. The report deals with the
researches that are being made on the prevailing wireless communication technology
and their working principle about how devices connect with the Wi-Fi technology.
Simultaneously, the challenges and the drawbacks that have aroused with the
researches with the Wi-Fi technology are mentioned and based on the future
requirement of more spectrum bandwidth due to the exponential growth of IoT
devices, the light based communication technology is proposed in the later part of the
report. The proposed li-fi technology will hence help in achieving visible light
communication between devices using light sources as the medium for
communication. The last part of the report deals with the future application of the
Visible light communication technology and its benefit in future communication
devices.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................
Discussion:.................................................................................................................................
Recent researches on communication devices:......................................................................
Problem raised from the recent researches:...........................................................................
Measures to address the problems:........................................................................................
Results:...................................................................................................................................
Future work:...............................................................................................................................
Conclusion:................................................................................................................................

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Introduction:
Communication has an important role in our daily life and for that we are
armed with communication devices. Communication devices are hardware enabled
devices that allows transmitting information including data sets and instructions
between two devices where one device acts as the transmitter and the other acts as the
receiver (Bi, Zeng & Zhang, 2016). The most well-known among the communication
devices is computer devices that allows transmission of information in wide range of
networks by the method of digital signals. Data get transferred through the
communication devices either in the digital form or analog form. Communication
devices includes cable modems, wireless modems, wireless access points, Wi-Fi
devices, network cards and routers (Rodney, 2017). Some of the well-known
communication devices includes Bluetooth devices that runs on RF technology
operating at 2.4GHz at an effective range of 32 feet with a transfer rate of 1Mbps and
through put of 72 kbps, infrared devices in which data gets transferred without the use
of wires and many more. This paper focusses on the Wi-Fi devices mainly that uses
Wi-Fi technology to transfer the information from on point to other by a faster
method. Wi-Fi technology allows communication devices to transfer huge amount of
data through the air. It is a form of electromagnetic energy consisting of X-rays,
visible light and various other forms of light. The technology allows to connect
devices to the internet wirelessly with microwave bands ranging from 2.4 GHz to
5GHz. Certain modern devices that work on Wi-Fi technology includes Real wear
HMMT-1, Cygnus, Samsung gear S3, Kigo watch, Aero scout ITAG100 and many
more. Wi-Fi technology are based on radio wireless devices. It allows connection of
local networks without wiring and hence it has become a popular choice for

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household and business use. In the Wi-Fi technology, data gets transferred between
two devices by means of radio signals, antenna and routers.
Aim of the report: This report aims in providing a much faster technology that is Li-
Fi technology that must be used in modern communication devices to help in visible
communication between devices. Traditional visual light communication is meant for
point to point communication while using the modern visual light communication it
helps in achieving potential cellular communication between communication devices
(Burchardt et al., 2014).
Significance of the report:
With the advancement of the Light based technology, visible light
communication can be applied to communication devices as a means of transferring
data in a new innovative way. This will lead to the further innovation of
communication devices that contain photodiode signal in them. This photodiode
accepts signals from light sources and thus information will get transferred in a more
innovative and faster way than the prevailing Wi-Fi technology used in
communication devices. This technology is unique to optical communication system
improving further security of communication devices. Using the li-fi technology will
prove to be beneficial for current research in 5G devices.
Discussion:
Recent researches on communication devices:
Wi-Fi technology also known as wireless connectivity allows communication
devices such as laptops, PCs, tablets and much more, to connect to high speed without
any wired network connection and thus allows transfer of data with the help of radio
signals. According to latest research wireless communication is taking over the entire

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market field and thus developing more efficient communication devices is necessary
to transfer data. The recent technology that is used is the Wi-Fi technology (Botrel
Menegato et al., 2014). Wi-Fi is generally a pulse of electromagnetic wave dynamism
conveyed by a router to the communication devices.
Working principle of wireless technology used in communication devices:
In this technology, communication device like routers work as the wireless
communication hub. Binary data gets transmitted to the router with the help of
ethernet connection (Adame et al., 2014). The router then converts these 1 and 0
binary data into high and low electromagnetic pulses. These waves are acknowledged
by a computer or communication devices like smartphones wireless adapter (C &
Shao, 2015). The wave pulses then get converted into computer language with the
help of wireless adapter and thus helps in transmitting data for communication. In this
technology, for a certain piece of data the router of the wi-fi network acts as the
antenna vibrating at a certain frequency range. The communication device interacting
with it also contains a comparable antenna with the same frequency range as that of
the wifi router and hence the data gets transmitted from the internet to the wireless
communication devices. The wifi modem through its electromagnetic radiation
initiates the device about the activity. It allows user to connect to other devices within
the close proximity. The wi-fi technology gives the advantage of wireless portability.
Communication devices using this technology needs to be secured by strong
passwords. Researches have shown that the Wi-Fi technology is taking over more that
50% of the world’s connectivity via internet. Wi-Fi is generally two radios
communicating with each other using low power and broadcasting information over a
long distance. The two radios used in this technology lets user download as well as
upload information from the internet allowing a two-way communication system.

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This technology used in modern devices uses the Internet Protocol to communicate
(Sapiezynski et al., 2017). Researches have shown that wi-fi technology has been
implemented successfully in wireless mesh networks. The technology provides
connection between devices in private homes, public spaces and in business fields
attracting more customers. Routers that work via battery, include a radio modem and
a wi-fi access point that allows internetworking of all communication devices
connected to them. Any network connected to that cellular data carrier gets access to
wi-fi network at speed of 2G, 3G or 4G using tethering procedure.
Problem raised from the recent researches:
Though wireless technology is flexible and convenient to use, still it has some
drawbacks. In this era of internet, we have so many data surrounding us which gets
transmitted from one part to the other in a random manner and for transferring those
data efficiently the most important thing that matters is the speed (Bi, Ho & Zhang,
2015). According to recent researches, Wi-Fi is now scattering about 50% of internet
traffic data and this number is gradually increasing due to the evolution of internet of
things (Pyattaev et al., 2015). So, in the upcoming future, each and every device will
get access to internet. Be it any devices including security camera transferring live
data to smartphone, live farm sending information of soil and water directly to the
user, vehicles transferring traffic data information, everything will get connected to
the internet (Kosek-Szott et al., 2017). As a result, the communication between
devices will also get changed and herein lies the problem with the wi-fi technology.
Researches have been done on the possible problems with the Wi-Fi technology in
this regard (Afaqui, Garcia-Villegas & Lopez-Aguilera, 2017). As wi-fi uses radio
frequencies to transfer data from communication devices, the problem that arises is
with the availability of limited spectrum as it is getting filled up in recent times due to

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the exponential increase of wireless communication devices like smartphones, laptops
or any kind of sensor devices. The limitation of spectrum availability of wi-fi ranges
to about 5GHz to satisfy the current need of data traffic but according to latest
analysis, due to the rapid growing of number of communication devices using Wi-Fi
technology, connection speed and traffic of transferring data will exceed the capacity
of available spectrum by the year 2020. Thus in order to meet the demand, an
additional spectrum of about 500MHz is needed to support the expected growth of
wirelessly connected communication devices. With the addition of this new spectrum,
another problem that arises with the wi-fi technology is with the licensing of the
newly added spectrum (Saini, 2016). Throughout the globe it is very much difficult to
license a new wireless spectrum as there exists various security concerns with it. The
biggest challenge in this case is the bandwidth (Vergouw et al., 2016). As limited
bandwidth is available with the Wi-Fi, transferring a 4k video through the Wi-Fi
network would be a challenging task for the communication devices connected to it.
Measures to address the problems:
In today’s world, more than hundred percent of wireless data is consumed in
every year which is doubling I an exponential growth. So, while moving from 5
billion connected devices to 20 billion connected devices the internet of things
becomes the reality when computer sensors, temperature sensors, pressure sensors,
occupancy sensors, CCTV cameras and a wide range of communication devices are
connected wirelessly everywhere (El-Tawab et al., 2017). With the increasing demand
of wireless data some sort of energy is needed to fuel the internet access. According to
researches, in 2015 as reported by the center for energy efficient communications, the
world expended about 43 terawatt hours for retrieving the wireless cloud which is
corresponding to the yearly ingesting of energy for 2015 of Romania (Liang, C., &

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Yu, 2015). As a measure to address the stated problem with the Wi-Fi technology,
some new innovation has to be implemented with the communication devices and
here in comes the use of light sources to transmit data from one point to the other.
Light sources accounts for about 20% of all in building electricity consumption. Thus,
the same light that provide illumination, can help in transmitting data. The technology
is known as Li-Fi (Haas et al., 2016).
Working principle of future Li-Fi technology used in communication devices:
Li-Fi or in other words light fidelity use visible light communication technology. It
refers to high speed, bi-directional and networked wireless communication using
light. It offers users using communication devices a substantially similar experience
as traditional wireless communication except using the light spectrum (Perwej, 2017).
Li-Fi is quite similar to Wi-Fi technology, the only difference is that the visible part of
the light spectrum is used to transfer data instead of radio frequencies. The flickering
beams can send data which use a linear phase source (Mozingo & Lunsford, 2018).
The technology is invented by Dr. Harold Collins in the year 2011. It has two parts-
one is the transmitter end and the other is the receiver end. The transmitter end
comprises of LED lamps with which the technology mainly works. This LED lamps
have a property in them that can be switched very quickly. The data stored in this are
mainly 1 and 0s as major of the communication devices understands data in their
language of 1 and 0. In this technology, data is brought to the light source, and then
the entire data set is converted to 1 and 0 and then the light bulb is blinked in a pretty
fast way sending information to the user. On the user end, there is a photo detector
that understands the light patterns as emitted by the LED bulb and converts that data
to the user-friendly language. Thus, accessing information by communication devices

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becomes much easier and faster than Wi-Fi networks when connected to a Li-Fi
network system.
When compared with the Wi-Fi network system, Li-Fi network can go up to
ten times the broadband speed in the world which can go up to 224 gigabits per
second in future (Kamel & Hadi, 2017). So downloading information through
communication devices using this technology would be faster than ever before. With
the help of this Li-Fi technology, future communication devices will communicate
with each other via medium of visible light. Visible light is a minor portion of the
electromagnetic band of the system. The wavelength of visible light ranges from 380
nanometers to 750 nanometers and thus it can even work better in high density
environment (Wang et al., 2017).
Results:
With the use of Li-Fi technology, visible communication between devices is
possible. Using visible light communication in modern communication devices has
many advantages such as it does not cause any health problem unlike Wi-Fi
technology due to its radiation, also there will be no interference in the
communication system with other radio signals (Jasmine & Anbarasan, 2015). Using
the Li-Fi technology, future wireless communication system will be free of cost as the
source of light is free to us and LEDs are easily available in the market. Li-Fi test
results proved to be 100 times faster than the Wi-Fi network. Li-Fi technology
provides access to the internet at the speed of light with more than 1Gbps speed which
is 100 times earlier than the traditional Wi-Fi technology that the modern
communication devices are using in recent times (Pandey, Patil & Viswanathan,
2016). Visible light communication technology can be used while drifting in plane,
where the VLC can be used unaffecting the signals of the airline, it can be integrated

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in medical devices, and like other communication technologies it can be used in all
places.
Future work:
In future there will be a need of better-connected infrastructure due to the
increasing number of communication devices using IoT (Akpakwu et al., 2018). This
will be provided by the Li-Fi technology (Chauhan & Kulai, 2015). With the help of
this communication technology, communication will take place via media called
visible light and as result we can access to internet with each of the light bulbs
available with the system (Khaparde & Kathane, 2016). As smart home solutions are
coming up in the future with new sensor devices, everything will get connected to the
internet so there will be a need of transmission medium faster than Wi-Fi that could
bring information from these devices to the internet and here lies the benefit of using
the light-based transmission technology (Begum, Shobhaa & Rambabau, 2016).
Another most important application of the technology is in the telecom sector. The
telecom sectors still face challenges in bringing a better internet infrastructure. In
recent situation, 4G connection is still not satisfactory while sending data through the
communication devices. It takes a lot of effort from the telecom sector to set up the
4G network infrastructure. This is because creating a backbone within the country is
much difficult to establish as it takes a lot of time as well as money. In order to that
telecom sector has to run optimum cables creating a lot of infrastructure issues (Uysal
& Nouri, 2014). Hence that process can be simplified with the VLC technology.
Visible Light-based communication system is the future of 5G and 6G network
(Ayyash et al., 2016). With the visible light communication technology, data will get
transferred along the spectrum at a speed that human eye cannot see. The vast
obtainability of LED bulbs will lead to connectivity in places where Wi-Fi has no

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access. In recent times there are many communication devices that connect to the
internet while swapping between 3G and 4g Wi-Fi facilities. With the increasing
number of communication devices future generation will need the use of faster
network in order to transfer data and that is only possible with the Li-Fi network
(Hase et al., 2016). HetNets providing improved QoS will need this technology in a
wide demand in future. The next most important application of the technology is at
the aviation industry where Li-Fi will bring a lot more value (Hays et al., 2014). Like
for example inside the aircraft streaming videos and other information would be easier
without connecting to any wire and hence it will replace a lot of cables from the air
craft (Prabhu, Pradeep & Gajendran, 2017). Li-Fi technology can also be applied to
future intelligent transport system. Current transport system has no intelligence in it.
In future vehicles are going to connect with each other passing information about their
speed and traffic. In this case the light from the cars can be used for sending
information (Cheng et al., 2014). From one car to the other. Another future
application of the VLC technology is within the indoor navigation where it can be
used in smart retail stores to figure out things using the light in the retail store and
thus creating a local map within the store with the help of visual light system
(Damodaran, Shaikh & Taylor, 2016). VLC technology will have a greater impact on
the future smart cities by replacing the optical cable communication by light-based
internet infrastructure.
Conclusion:
In today’s world, sending data via communication devices takes place in a
blink of an eye. Modern communication devices are supported by internet connection
known as 4G LTE which outlooks for extended evolution. It is a part of today’s latest
cellular technology. With the increased dynamicity of the contents in the internet, the