Optical Networking has already played a significant role in the realization of the 5G vision providing increased transport network capacity and low latency for the interconnection of disaggregated radio access and core network elements.

However, the evolution towards 6G introducing technologies such as Cell Free-MIMO, Integrated Communication and Sensing and extensive adoption of AI enabled automation brings the need of new features such as further increase in transport network capacity, enhanced granularity in resource allocation as well as configuration flexibility and automation.

In this context, optical networking able to effectively support all these requirements can play a key role. This tutorial will provide an overview of 5G and 6G architectural structures and will concentrate on how Optical Networking can support current and upcoming transport network requirements in these environments taking a multilayer approach.

About the Speaker

Anna Tzanakaki is an Associate Professor at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece where she is leading the “Systems and Networks” Research Group.

Previously she was an Associate Professor at the Athens Information Technology (AIT) Center, Greece and an adjunct faculty member of the Information Networking Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, USA.

Her research interests include network architectures and design and over the past 10 years has focused on 5G and 6G infrastructures.

She has been and is actively participating in a number of 5G PPP and 6G IA EU projects, has served as the technical coordinator of the 5G PPP projects 5G-PICTURE and 5G-VICTORI, and is currently the Project and Technical coordinator of the EU DEP project 5G-TACTIC focusing on 5G Security. She is a co-author of over 230 publications and co-inventor of several granted and published patents. She is the recipient of the OPTICA Jane Simmons speakership award 2024 for her contribution to optical and converged network research.