Connectivity on track with Trulifi

As the leader in lighting innovation, Signify is addressing the challenge of connectivity on board, and amazingly, we’re doing it all through the power of light. Not only can lighting provide connectivity on the go, but it does it all at blistering speeds that far surpass the WiFi connections we’re used to. And naturally, it includes great quality light.
 

Signify’s Trulifi is a connectivity technology that uses light waves to enable an internet connection that’s fast, stable and reliable. It’s great for super speed internet in the workplace, and for transportation, the benefits are multiplied.
 

What’s more, unlike the radio spectrum, the light spectrum is license-free. This means no upfront investment for network operations in government-issued spectrum licenses.

Indeed, connectivity is one distinct advantage that rail has over air travel, and it’s an issue on which long distance travelers are unwilling to compromise. Today’s passenger expects to stream high definition movies, upload heavy files, and make video calls, every kilometer of their journey.
 

And in our connected world, the train itself has connectivity requirements; for example, HD cameras collect security footage that must be offloaded on physical hard disks for processing.
 

When you look behind the curtain, how to keep the connection stable and fast is a crucial question that operators must face. At home, our WiFi router passes a radio signal to our TV or smartphone in more or less a straight line.
 

A large, moving vehicle presents more challenges. Trains are full of metal surfaces and also full of people. Both of these elements affect the ability of radio transmissions to reliably hit their destinations.
 

Heavy, constantly moving carriage couplings that lie open to the elements don’t play well with the data cabling needed to link carriages to one another. And linking the train to the outside network requires costly cellular data connections, which are unable to penetrate tunnels or mountains along the way.

By adding Trulifi to the connectivity mix, seamless connections and stellar speeds become possible. HD streaming and even online gaming are on the table.   

Signify is already working with Latécoère to provide Trulifi on commercial aircraft, connecting seat-back screens to fast internet with a speed up to 250 Mbps. Trains and buses are a logical extension.
 

Connectivity to seat-back screens could also be extended to passengers’ own devices through a seat-point USB connection. And as with the adoption of WiFi and Bluetooth: when the infrastructure becomes more widespread, we’ll likely see LiFi receivers built into a new generation of laptops, tablets and eventually smartphones, rendering a wired connection unnecessary.
 

In future, LiFi can revolutionize the way we connect on the train. LiFi-equipped poles, placed at intervals along the track, follow the moving vehicle, beaming high speed internet underground, through tunnels and hilly terrain.