Philips Lighting acquires data transfer company via light

At the end of 2016, Philips Lighting acquired a French visible light communications company. With the company, Philips acquires knowledge in the field of LiFi: network technology that works via LED light.

The Luciom company has since moved to the Philips Lighting headquarters in Eindhoven. A Philips spokesperson has confirmed the acquisition to Leds Magazine. He did not disclose what Luciom will focus on, but the French company is working on technology in the field of LiFi.

Among other things, Luciom offers Lifi tags. These provide one-way communication via LED light, which can be used, for example, to locate the position of smartphone users in buildings, provide them with content and perform analyzes about places in buildings that are heavily visited. In addition, Luciom is working on improving the speed of LiFi. With a USB accessory, the company claims to achieve a download speed of 20Mbit/s and an uplink of 5Mbit/s.

For years, Lifi has been seen as a technology that can complement Wi-Fi. Until now, obstacles to the breakthrough were the limited speed and the need for the transmitter and receiver to be able to reach each other with light pulses. With the technology, data is sent via the oscillation of LEDs. This happens so quickly that the human eye cannot see it.