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.