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This interview with Jean-Paul Linnartz, Professor, Eindhoven University of Technology / Research Fellow, Signify is about the Future of Optical Wireless Communication. He is also the chairman of the Scientific committee of the Optical Wireless Communication Conference,
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00:00Welcome back again at Yakima TV. Today we have a very interesting topic around optical
00:17wireless communication and I will interview Jean-Paul Lennart. He is professor at the
00:24Eindhoven University of Technology and he's also a research fellow at Signify and he is the chair of
00:30the scientific committee of this new conference which will be held during the Photonics Applications
00:35Week the first week of October in the Eindhoven, the Netherlands. So to start with with you Jean-Paul
00:44welcome. Could you give a background why this conference will be organized? Yeah of course
00:51there are many many many conferences in communication and wireless communication. So why yet another one?
00:59Well the topic of optical communications I think is a very rapidly growing one and it's also a bit
01:05a special topic because it's not just plain communication it has a lot to do with and
01:11that's why I like to have a conference here in Eindhoven as well it's closely related to the
01:15new developments in photonics because all the photonics integration can really help us to
01:20improve the quality of optical communications speeds by using lasers by using all the other
01:27integration possibilities and we have of course in this region not only a lot of activities at
01:33Eindhoven University of Technology but we also have Signify, a former Philip's Lighting a company was very
01:40active in trying to start the optical wireless communication really as a business proposition to beat so
01:48to say in some aspects Wi-Fi and having more reliable faster communication.
01:54Okay so I understand that you mentioned Wi-Fi but Wi-Fi is one of the five topics I am well let's say five
02:02areas in which optical wireless communication can be applied to so could you could you share about that
02:11what what what what what what is optical wireless communication and where are the what areas are there
02:17yeah so it's indeed a very broad communication area and if we quickly look what can be presented at
02:26a conference like this one what are the kind of things that that would fit there then we see a huge
02:31range from communication over a very short range even inside a chip all the way to communication
02:38between satellites or between spacecrafts and why is this broad range of interest well for very short
02:46range communication inside a chip we want to be faster and faster and then the optical communication can
02:53be better and faster than the typical wired communication and so this is an example of photonic integration
03:03yeah it's a bit harder to to describe precisely what is happening in the photonics integration and what
03:13is part of the photonics integration we see that a lot of optical functions are integrated into a photonics
03:19chip but even if we look further into the time horizon the combination of doing calculations and communicating
03:26any kind of super chip we see that the communication inside the chip may go may go optical so it's uh when
03:36you talk about the photonics integration i see that a little bit as just having certain functions of
03:40communication as a specialty as a very dedicated activity but the high speed communication between
03:47memories and databases and processing units tends to go in future in an optical way okay so that's the
03:56ultra short range and then there is a short range for wireless personal area networks so let me take
04:02together the short range in the medium range communications for um the communication like we at this
04:08moment use bluetooth or wi-fi that is a moderate range of a couple of meters um life light is very
04:16interesting why because we get more and more of these devices who want to communicate we are migrating
04:21towards the internet of things where 50 billion devices are all connecting and because of that
04:28huge density there are so many users of the radio spectrum that they all interfere with each other
04:34and the advantage the advantage today of light is that light does not go through the wall
04:39and because of that it also does not interfere with other communications somewhere else and therefore
04:44the number of devices that we can pack in a single building is much larger if we use optical
04:50communication and that's also one of the main reasons why signify now see such a growing interest
04:55in wi-fi it's reliable communication because you don't have the interference from all the other
05:01users in the same building you just have a guaranteed light beam carrying a lot of bits okay and
05:08just for like my information what does life i mean because yeah um it started with uh hi-fi the high
05:18fidelity music quality that term was then hijacked for wireless fidelity high quality wireless communication
05:26and uh the name was used by professor harold haas from the university of edinburgh for the first time and he
05:33was calling it li-fi light fidelity communication by a light now the tradition of communication via light
05:39is of course much older even in the 90s there were experiments at phillips for conferencing uh systems
05:46but nowadays we see that the advantage that light is not going through the wall is making its inroads and
05:51is making light communication fly okay okay so and then there is the long range and ultra long range what uh
05:58what applications are there let me give an example because the building to building is a pretty obvious
06:04one but um high speed trading we know that uh light travels uh with the speed of light thus in free
06:12space it goes faster than via an optical fiber so if you trade both in london and in frankfurt and you
06:19want to know at nanoseconds precisely when stock exchange rates go up or down you can earn a lot of money
06:26and therefore there are companies who are building a straight laser beam in a couple of hops between
06:32frankfurt and london and they just find a place where they can cross the uh the channel the fastest
06:37way so those are examples where you shoot data with an optical beam with a number of advantages okay so
06:45but that that's mean that means that i mean if it's foggy or something then the laser the light the laser
06:53could be let's say diverted or is that not i'm just i'm just intrigued or let's say flabbergasted to
06:58realize that you can send the laser from with between hubs from london to frankfurt or is that
07:03naive to think so yes but not in one go because the earth is not flat and you have to do that in multiple
07:10hops and indeed one of the topics that we are interested in of course is turbulence not only between
07:17london and frankfurt but also if you shoot a laser beam from the ground to an airplane to let everyone
07:22watch movie movies while traveling in the uh in the aircraft um and then what happens to these radio
07:30signals under turbulence under slightly foggy conditions is very interesting and in some
07:36conditions indeed if it is foggy all over the place you lose the communication so how do you
07:40handle that and that's then more kind of networking problem you can first go to another location and
07:45send up a beam from somewhere else those kind of sort of mesh network then or something like that
07:50okay and also an ultra long range between is also between satellites and then that's the same that's
07:55also a laser yes the satellites move and you have to point and you have to track the other satellite
08:04so that that's ultra precise highly expensive highly sophisticated uh optics electronics and very very high
08:13speed speed okay but but uh let's say this covers the whole range of uh optical wireless communication
08:21but it's not just currently that's not just academic but there is all there are also a lot of commercial
08:27applications apparently yeah so um of course also these links between satellites are being used although
08:34there are not so many satellites that it is a huge market but it's of course a very high margin very
08:41sophisticated area at this moment we also see uh li-fi entering the market as a kind of mass market
08:49products not at the millions of devices in the same way that wi-fi is now currently available but we see
08:58that particular that certain applications really want this interference free application for instance
09:03industry 4.0 where you don't want to have no interference from the outside world you want to have a reliable
09:09link and that's places where uh li-fi cells for instance the true life i system that signify is
09:16offering at this market okay could you you you had some other let's say interesting uh presentation or
09:24slice to show uh what i what i like about i just may interrupt you on this topic about optical wireless
09:31communication that it borrows from quite a number of other technologies we have seen the very high speed
09:36communications in the optical fiber part so that terabits per seconds that can be communicated i know
09:42that university of oxford can use fiber technology to send wirelessly one and a half terabit per second
09:48over the air that's very very fun we see that in 5g certain principles are being used for beam steering
09:59from a distance to send the data exactly to the place where you want to to to use it so there is a link
10:05with the optical wireless communication lidar in cars so sending short pulses and then figuring out which
10:13car is ahead of you is which car you're driving to follow and using a lot of signal processing well these
10:21ultra short pulses can of course also be used for communication and all the components can be used there
10:28and of course even for the indoor part it's interesting to know what our friends in space are
10:33doing with satellite communication so this figure initially was used to pitch how in in the photon delta
10:42or in the photonics hotspot in eindhoven optical wireless communication can be a very interesting topic to
10:50to borrow from all the technologies where we are really experts in in this field in this area and
10:57also address a quite large market and that's therefore exactly a topic that we would like to see being
11:03addressed at the conference okay so basically what you would like to have is also from all those specific
11:09areas the four you mentioned here but also the five areas in which optical wireless communication is
11:14applicable you would like to have presentations and and both academic and industry i i assume
11:21yes academic and industry experimental and theoretical so all across these range but what i'm seeing is
11:31that a lot of academic work is good it's now targeted at higher and higher speeds faster and faster
11:39communication on the other end what we see in in business like in signify is what customers want is
11:46maybe not more than a gigabit per second because that's already huge but they want to have it reliable
11:51and they want to have hundreds of people maybe not in corona times but in normal times hundreds of people
11:57in the same building all so the density and the the possibilities that light beams can offer there would fit
12:05very nicely and okay understanding this is very very relevant yeah okay um and okay yeah you have some
12:14other area yeah so the reason why i i selected this slide on vixels is that i believe that optical
12:22communication can enter the market of the smartphones relatively soon because if you have an advanced
12:27smartphone yourself you may have a vixel already in there it can make three 3d selfies it can recognize
12:34your face so it sends these very short pulses to a human to the environment and therefore there is
12:44already optical there are optical components already in the smartphone and it's just a matter of starting
12:48to use these for life i kind of communication okay one billion of these pixels have been sold
12:55that would mean that potentially the market that can communicate is also already pretty large if you
13:00just know how to connect these for the uh communication applications as well what do you mean with one
13:06billion pixels have been sold you mean the the the the the technology in in the in the in the smartphone
13:13yeah so so these these very tiny lasers can be used for for instance the autofocus function of the camera
13:21and if you already use a very fast laser for a function of an autofocus of a camera which i would
13:27think would only be uh interesting if you can produce it for a couple of cents in a smartphone
13:32that we sell them on euros then it means that we are already ready towards a mass market and and
13:39the former philips photonics which is now being sold to to whom has already sold more than one billion of
13:45these pixels and they are in smartphones as we speak today okay okay and you also mentioned you show
13:52on your picture that on the slide that you can use this for augmented and virtual reality applications
13:57as well yeah it does a kind of 3d scan of the environment yeah and uh that's also an application
14:04which is seen as pretty interesting at this moment okay okay okay and then i would like to show this and
14:12that sounds a bit exotic i have another copy here of such a device i'm not sure whether the camera can
14:18really capture it um i usually introduce this but a device that can communicate at a gigabit per second
14:26and that costs less than a wi-fi access point is that really realistic if it needs to do steerable beams
14:32um but we already have such a device in our house and the optical pickup hat of the dvd
14:38can pass almost a gigabit per second if the optical pits from the disc swirl surrounding it so having
14:48steerable beams having very high speed uh optics that communicate rapidly has been done 10 20 years ago
14:56when the dvd and the cd were developed here in eindhoven we still have a lot of experience like this one
15:02and and this could become a kind of replacement for the communication devices of the future so
15:07i believe in that this technology can really make it okay next to radio that that's why i'm showing
15:13this picture and i also believe that peinthoven is the place where this uh where we should have
15:20a conference like this one yeah so what we see right now if i use this picture we are using leds
15:28leds as we have them in the ceiling but preferably infrared leds to communicate at speeds
15:33of a quarter of a gigabit per second 250 megabits per second that's uh quite more than we need to
15:41stream video in future we see a trend of doing that via lasers the vixel is a type of uh of cheap laser
15:49and in the further future we think of tens or hundreds of gigabits per second where we have a
15:55very small laser beam containing very high data rate and we steer it exactly to the location where we want
16:00to have it okay that and that's the example you i mean that's that's that's also related to the dvd
16:05example you gave in the previous slide yeah although then of course all our photonics integration fans
16:11friends will not have a motor that that that positions the beam but we'll do that with photonic
16:16integration components in future okay okay great clear any other things you want to share about uh optical
16:25wireless communication and and what's happening yeah i think it is therefore quite an interesting
16:32topic to have this conference uh about this there is one thing that i would like to share with you
16:38putting my academic hand on as coaching phd candidates psd students going towards their dissertation and
16:49they like to go to conferences because they need to and they need to tell their story but for me a conference
16:55is also a place where you should listen and where you should absorb and where you get feedback and where you
17:00get questions and interaction that's why i choose this picture from an interaction with lucas
17:04asselberg and that's one different setting but a conference for me is about the interaction
17:10and why i like to work together with you of yakima is that you're experienced in debating and moderating
17:19presentations much more than just only having the presentation and i would first of all think that
17:25in corona times if there is a risk that we will have a number of people who watch online rather than sit
17:31there in the audience that new style of not just having a lecture is quite interesting in addition to
17:37uh yeah the new style of interaction is interesting and i think the reviewing process for a conference
17:46goer is also relevant and nowadays you just get a letter back your paper has been accepted please
17:52send a final copy yeah i think the interaction of uh getting questions from experts getting a debate
18:00getting questions like is your theory really correct did you use the right assumptions
18:05uh is your experiment representative those are the kind of things which i think also have a place
18:11in a conference and i would like to have a much more interactive style of uh conferencing rather than
18:17listening to lectures so that's that's what we're going to try to do with the optical wireless
18:22communication conference whether it be online or offline or a mix probably a mix because we don't know
18:28exactly uh in october where we are and what the situation with covet 19 slash corona is doing then
18:36um well i think uh if if you if i mean i suppose you have many other things you would like to share maybe
18:42there is if there's one urgent thing you would like to share before uh before ending this this interview
18:49this presentation uh then please go ahead um if not do you have some things yes well what i so following
18:58up on that last point i would really love to have a style of presentation where it's about the message
19:05that someone have not necessarily the latest result where you increase the speed by 10 percent of a system
19:11but a kind of general view like we have been addressing the wrong problem or the the way we have
19:18mathematically been describing the led is different and now i want to share the thoughts
19:23in this conference those kind of talks i really love to have in in a meeting rather than this tiny
19:31uh evolutionary result that is typically sent to a conference okay so hopefully you will get a lot of
19:39feedback on this and and also uh propositions or submissions which i have this this uh this
19:47approach this aspect to it but let's hope so um so thank you very much for your uh for your
19:54presentation sharing your your knowledge and your ideas uh before we end i would there is always one
20:00question i want to ask because we always talk about technology innovation and those sort of things and
20:05it's very interesting but i'm always also interested to learn a bit about the person behind the
20:12professional so therefore i ask my question to you is uh could you say something about who is your
20:21preferred artist or a piece of art or or even city or whatever just to give a glimpse of yourself
20:30apart from your professional life so and i don't know really really what what aspect to mention here
20:36my father was an artist he made pencil drawings really okay in a lot of detail and what i learned from him
20:44is he made very different things as what mondrian did but what an artist does is he looks into reality
20:53and he described it in his own world in his own language that can be a poem that can be a painting
21:00and to some extent what a particularly a theoretical scientist does he tries to understand reality and
21:07describe that so that is i think where i believe that scientists and artists are very very much doing
21:14the same things okay now that does not mean that i do painting i my hobby is making radio programs i
21:20already dealt at presenting sports programs when i was a student at eindhoven university of technology
21:28we are still doing that we are running radio for brain pod and so that's why we have a lot of
21:35interviews on topics like science some topics on what's happening in in this region and now of course
21:41you also want to know what kind of music we we play there well anything that people like here but
21:47let me show a little bit of my own taste well when when when i grew up it was more the pink floyd
21:54style of music that i liked it liked a lot although nowadays some really heavy rock is still something
22:01that i appreciate like the within temptations the epic kind of stuff this really we don't play that we
22:07don't play that too much because i think scare away a lot of our listeners yeah it's something
22:12which i turn on the volume okay okay well that that's interesting that you like that sort of music
22:18interesting to hear your the the let's say some a little bit about your background or your behind
22:25which your profession you are so thank you very much uh i hope we will get a lot of interesting uh
22:32presentations also at the october optical wireless communication conference and uh thank you very
22:37much
22:44you
22:46you
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