Advanced optical transceiver and switching solutions for next-generation optical networks

Innovative transceiver and switching approaches should be explored with special focus on flexibility, energy efficiency, sustainability, and interoperability to be adopted on next-generation 6G optical networks driven by the diverse landscape of emerging applications and services and increasing traffic demand. In this regard, multiband (MB) and spatial division multiplexing (SDM) technologies arise as promising technologies for providing suitable network capacity scaling while fulfilling the stringent requirements of the incoming 6G era. In this paper, innovative MB over SDM (MBoSDM) switching node and sliceable bandwidth/bit rate variable transceiver (S-BVT) architectures with enhanced capabilities and features are proposed and experimentally validated. Different network scenarios have been identified and assessed, enabling up to 180.9 Gb/s S+C+L transmission in back-to-back (B2B) configuration. A MBoSDM scenario including both transceiver and switching solutions is demonstrated, including a 19-core multi-core fiber (MCF) of 25.4 km. Thanks to the transceiver modular and scalable approach, higher capacities can be envisioned by enabling multiple slices working in the different bands beyond the C-band. A power efficiency analysis of the proposed transceiver is also presented, including a pathway towards the integration with a software defined networking (SDN) control plane assisted by energy-aware artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) trained models.