The three-year project ELIoT (Enhancing Lighting for the Internet of Things) aims to provide an open reference architecture for the support of the Internet of Things, as well as contributing to the standardization of applications based on the internet travelling over light. The goal of the project is to develop market-ready IoT applications based on LiFi (Light Fidelity) as a fast and reliable alternative for industrial data transmissions.

For this purpose, LiFi must meet the ever-increasing demands on existing communication networks in terms of data rates, stability and latency. Compared to WiFi, LiFi provides the advantage of higher possible bandwidths and can be implemented in places where the use of radio frequencies is either discouraged or impossible.

The core task of Fraunhofer FOKUS is the integration of LiFi into 5G-based networks. LiFi is not yet part of standardized 3GPP access technologies. Using the Open5GCore toolkit, experts from our business unit Software-based Networks will be able to seamlessly integrate the new LiFi technology into local, 5G-based industrial networks.

The project originates from the EU innovation program Horizon 2020 and receives 6 million euros in funding from the public-private partnership “Photonics21”. It will run for the course of three years, from the 1st of January 2019 until the 31st of December 2021. In addition to the Fraunhofer institutes FOKUS and HHI, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), Nokia, MaxLinear, Deutsche Telekom, KPN, Weidmüller, LightBee, the University of Oxford, and Eindhoven University of Technology are also participating in ELIoT.