The Role of Optical Networking in the 6G Era

Sixth-generation (6G) networks will revolutionize the way we communicate and connect, with promises of higher data rate, lower latency and higher reliability. To efficiently support the 6G use cases and service requirements, the optical networking community needs to introduce a number of innovations at a component, system and control level. In this paper, we provide our view on these innovations and discuss their adaptation to the x-haul network.