Techno-Economics of LiFi in IoT Applications

This paper describes the first techno-economical study for the deployment of very dense wireless networks for new Internet of things (IoT) applications. We propose mobile optical wireless communication (OWC) also known as light fidelity (LiFi) because it offers unique advantages for the IoT such as robustness through exclusive channel access in the unlicensed optical spectrum, lower latency, and enhanced security. We investigate the deployment of LiFi in an industrial scenario, as currently specified by ITU-T recommendation G.9991, including the required fixed backbone and assuming full coverage. We propose six different LiFi topologies and compare them in different industrial scenarios. The comparison is performed in terms of Bill of Material, and in terms of costs. We show that a fully wired topology requires higher installation costs but incurs in lower operational costs, resulting in lower total costs of ownership (TCO) than other wireless topologies. Furthermore, power consumption has been identified as the cost driver for all topologies (more than 200% of the initial investments), triggering the need for power-saving techniques. Last but not least, the separation of Optical Front Ends (OFEs) has been identified as a critical design parameter, as shorter separation requires higher costs but reduces the cost per delivered bitrate. We discuss promising ways for the deployment of very dense wireless networks as key to bringing LiFi into future IoT applications.