Demonstration of an SDN-enabled, resilient, rate-adaptable hybrid fiber/outdoor FSO/mmWave transport for a 6G X-haul architecture

The transition to 6G networks will necessitate advanced infrastructures to handle massive device integration, exponential data growth, and low latency requirements. The proposed 6G architecture will integrate diverse technologies, such as free space optical (FSO) and mmWave, into the existing fiber infrastructure. This work demonstrates a hybrid 6G X-haul solution consisting of 10 km fiber/100 m FSO/5 m mmWave that employs a software-defined network as an interface platform to improve network resilience and flexibility in 6G networks. For this purpose, real-time traffic management and dynamic link switching operate within 600 µs, interacting with the heterogeneous physical layers. This enables the system to adapt to changing conditions and failures, ensuring continuous and uninterrupted connectivity. Experimental results proved that this dynamic software-defined networking-based topology can manage high-capacity data rates of up to 60 Gbps while supporting adaptive modulation schemes below hard decision-forward error correction.