Optical Wireless in Support of a Computing-Communication Continuum for Connected Mobility

The need to exchange vast amounts of data among
road-side users and edge computing puts optical wireless access
into the focus of 6G. This contribution highlights two optical
wireless modes for the far-access and fronthaul segment, building
on low-cost transceivers for joint communication and lighting
and robust fibre-in-the-air connectivity, respectively. Towards
these directions, we discuss (i) the capability of light emitting
diodes to establish Gb/s visible-light communication links using
simple on-off keying for a format-transparent relay of Ethernet,
and (ii) alignment-tolerant coupling between single-mode fibre
cores by means of optical beamforming, which further mitigates
turbulence in free-space links that extend fibre-grade capacity to
isolated fibre networks through a Fi-Wi-Fi bridge.