Li-Fi for Augmented Reality Glasses: A Proof of Concept

Reliable connectivity is a mandatory requirement for modern augmented reality (AR) glasses. For some applications, current radio frequency-based wireless communication technologies fail to meet sophisticated data rate, latency and interference requirements. This paper presents a proof of concept of using Light-Fidelity (Li-Fi) technology for AR glasses to address these issues. In particular, the paper discusses basic Li-Fi architectures and derives a concept for highspeed, bi-directional Li-Fi connectivity. In order to provide spatially aware content, a network-based localization method is introduced. This approach employs the simple network management protocol (SNMP) and is independent from the Li-Fi transceiver, as long as it has a media access control (MAC) address. The practicability of the developed Li-Fi transceiver is verified by data rate and latency measurements. Data rates of up to 536MBit/s are demonstrated over short distances and 216MBit/s over 5m with a sufficient field of view. The complete setup including our localization algorithm is verified by spatial tracking of the AR glasses. Thereby, we report a login time into the Li-Fi domain of 2.04s on average.