Li-Fi and Visible Light Communication for Smart Cities and Industry 4.0: Challenges, research & market status in 2023

The development of technologies that use cellular Radio Frequency (RF) networks to transmit information wirelessly has increased dramatically over the last decade. These technologies include mobile phones, tablets, connected gadgets and the Internet of Things (IoT). The simultaneous use of all these devices quickly saturates the available network. As the RF spectrum resource is limited and regulated, it is important to find alternative connectivity. To reply to this shortage of wireless connectivity, Li-Fi (Light Fidelity) and Visible Light Communication (VLC) are good candidates. Li-Fi is the high data rate bidirectional application of VLC. VLC uses visible and infrared light to transmit data wirelessly. Over the last decade, interest in VLC grew in the scientific community and on the market. However, most scientific works and products are focused on the indoor environment. The external environment for VLC applications, which would be very relevant for smart cities as well as some industrial applications, is very little covered in the literature. This sixty minutes tutorial aims to present the advances of these technologies, their challenges and their relevance in these two environments.