Broadband using LED lamps

Broadband through LEDs tips up article tells that German Scientists believe the light coming in to your home could by encoded to receive a wireless broadband signal. The scientists think they can transport data at high bandwidths (currently 230Mbps) by generating a signal in a room by slightly flickering all the lights in unison. The theory is that lights will have to be LEDs to flicker quickly enough and only use the blue part of the LED spectrum to filter out noise. The only “new” idea here is replacing the last couple of meters of bidirectional cat5 delivery with a unidirectional flickering LED, the rest of the way the data would need to go through traditional ways, most probably using some data over mains technology to special LED light bulbs.

This does not sound very new idea. Free space optical broadband has been proposed many times before. It has been coming and going. The technology world is makes circles. Oldest application of optical free space communications has probably been flashing lamp with Morse code. Then there has been TV remote controllers, IrDA some wireless LAN ideas with optical components and various point to point free space optical communications ideas (I have seen demonstrations). Nothing very new in this idea. If you want to play with optical communications ideas more here are some pages worth to look: ePanorama.net optoelectronics, my serial data IR transmitter and receiver circuit and my experimental laser data link.