Light Fidelity for Internet of Things: A survey

Abstract

Light-Fidelity (LiFi) is quickly emerging as the next-generation communication technology thanks to its unique benefits, such as available spectrum, high data rates, low implementation costs, and inherent beamforming capabilities. As a consequence, it is endorsed by the scientific literature as an appealing innovation for disclosing disruptive services. The wavefront of LiFi technology is very wide: in this manuscript, we focus our attention on the interplay with the Internet of Things. Essentially, LiFi can assist the IoT in interconnecting a massive number of heterogeneous devices by addressing the current Radio Frequency spectrum bottleneck. Moreover, by investigating LiFi and IoT individually, several surveys and review papers testify to the noteworthiness of both technologies. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, a comprehensive investigation of contributions where both of them interplay is missing. To fill this gap, this survey provides a thorough investigation of all the research areas in which LiFi key features might enhance the upcoming IoT networks. The evaluation of existing literature on LiFi adopted in the IoT domain can be valuable in identifying missing gaps arising from the interaction of these two technologies, as well as proficiently pinpointing future research directions.