Topic Categories

Please review the category names and descriptions carefully, as they change each year.

NOTE:
Categories 1 through 3 provide feedback to the network operator community with a shorter-term relevance. This means submissions to these categories should focus on the near- to mid-term needs of engineering and operating a network, where they are or will become commercially viable in a short timeframe.

Categories 5 through 14 provide feedback to the R&D community with a longer-term relevance. This means submissions to these categories should focus on fundamental and evolving topics that one would expect to take a few years before becoming commercially viable.

Category 1. Optical Network Applications and Services
Category 2. Network Technologies and Applications
Category 3. FTTx Technologies, Deployment, and Applications
Category 5. Fibers and Optical Propagation Effects
Category 6. Fiber and Waveguide-Based Devices: Amplifiers, Lasers, Sensors, and Performance Monitors
Category 7. Optical Devices for Switching, Filtering, and Signal Compensation
Category 8. Optoelectronic Devices
Category 9. Digital Transmission Systems
Category 10. Transmission Subsystems and Network Elements
Category 11. Optical Processing and Analog Subsystems
Category 12. Core Networks
Category 13. Access Networks
Category 14. Datacom, Computercom, and Short Range and Experimental Optical Networks
Meeting the Computercom Challenge: Components and Architectures for Computational Systems and Data Centers

1. Optical Network Applications and Services
Today’s networks are designed to meet the evolving needs of service demands and take advantage of the latest technologies and designs. Those networks require a variety of tools, analytical methods, and control/management/design parameters to ensure that they are optimized for the service needs and demand sets that they support. This category looks at near- to mid-term networks, the costs and benefit tradeoffs, the designs for protection and restoration, and the applications that drive the network designs.

Some critical areas of interest include the design of multi-layer networks across packet and optical demands, the cost tradeoffs of adding new technologies vs. continuing with the current ones, the design of control planes to support emerging services, and the operation and maintenance of complex networks. The impact on networks of emerging technologies and concepts such as 100G services, OTN-switched networks, multi-layer and multi-domain control architectures, and field demonstrations are all contained in this category.

The economics of network architectures and solutions often drive decisions and are key to many of the focal areas of this subcommittee. Other important topics include design for resiliency and restorability, tradeoffs between packet and optics networks, dynamic networks, and standards support for key services and network needs.

Specific areas include but are not limited to:

  • Network architecture and applications
  • Network planning and planning tools
  • Design for reliability, restoration and protection
  • Network optimization for both Capex and Opex considerations
  • New services enabled by technologies or architectures
  • Emerging standards and the impact on optical or multi-layer networks
  • Packet services and their impact on network design
  • Network control, operations and management
  • Control plane design enabling multi-domains or multi-layers
  • Field demonstrations of near to mid-term network functionality
  • The impact of new technologies (OTN, tunable add/drop ROADMs, etc) on network design
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Category 2. Network Technologies and Applications
This category focuses on near- to mid-term emerging network technologies and applications. The networking aspect comprises emerging transport and switching technologies for metro/regional and long-haul networks. Within this broad area, there are central points on which this category focuses:

  • Evolution of high-speed transmission and switching technology. The past technology developments have provided technology solutions for transmission and switching up to 100G. However, the current solutions are not cost effective compared to the Nx10GE technologies. Therefore, this category focuses on operationalizing aspects of 40G and 100G technologies. Furthermore, technology concepts are needed for solutions beyond 100G.
  • All optical transmission and switching technologies were R&D topics for decades. This category focuses on maturity aspects, missing links for making especially all-optical switching technologies carrier grade and ready for deployments.
  • Main focal points of this category are the experimental evaluations, proof of concepts, field trials, interoperability and deployment aspects of new technologies from the different point of views of component and system vendors as well as experiences and lessons learned from carriers.
  • The application area focuses on evolving broadband, high-bandwidth-demanding applications as well as interactive applications, e.g. Digital Cinema, SuperHD, 3D-video, interactive video and gaming, and their interworking with the optical transport networks.
  • All of these new technologies and applications must go through severe economical evaluations. Therefore this category includes technology economic analysis as a main step for getting new solutions ready for deployment.

Topics include:

  • Near-term network technologies issues
  • Network engineering and deployments
  • Field trial demonstrations
  • Carrier/operator network technology requirements
  • Technology economic analysis
  • Optical transport and switched systems
    • System performance emulation techniques
    • Modulation techniques and error correction codes for high speed transmission
    • Control plane protocols and technologies for optical and multi-layer networks
    • Emerging industry standards
    • High-speed Ethernet and OTN technologies
    • 40G, 100G, and beyond transport
  • Device, components, and equipment
    • Components, sub-systems, systems
    • Reliability
    • Testing and diagnostics
    • Infrastructure, fiber and cabling
    • Installations
    • Manufacturability
  • Applications
    • Digital Cinema
    • SuperHD technologies
    • Video-on-Demand technologies
    • 3-D video
    • Interactive video applications
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Category 3. FTTx Technologies, Deployment, and Applications
FTTx has been deployed in many countries around the world and has reached several important milestones both in subscriber numbers as well as technology advances both in the endpoint electronics and the advancements in the outside plant optical components and processes. In many countries providers have evolved their platforms to include second-generation technologies (e.g. GPON, GE-PON) and are looking at migration issues to future access platforms such as XGPON, 10GEPON, or WDM systems.  In the outside plant there have been equivalent advances in fibers and connectors to make the deployment of FTTx more cost effective, both in terms of capital and operational expenses. In addition, advances have been made not just in the deployment of FTTx, but in its surveillance and monitoring of its health to reduce overall maintenance issues and improve overall customer satisfaction.

On the services side, there has been an explosion in bandwidth needs from the subscriber, in order to support both more concurrent usage as well as increased use of higher-bandwidth services such as HDTV and soon to be 3DTV. These residential services as well as increases in support for business services are continuing to drive up the bandwidth requirements for the access network and have resulted in service providers looking at next-generation technologies.

This subcommittee focuses on the practical issues that face the further expansion of these deployments and their technical solutions. The aim is that the various lessons learned from these deployments, and issues encountered and resolved, can be shared by the community at large.

Areas covered include:

  • FTTx network architecture design and applications
  • PON technologies, networks and applications (e.g. XG-PON, WDM)
  • Home networking and inside wiring
  • Applications and services
  • Component design (e.g. connectors, fibers, devices)
  • Operational issues (e.g. testing, installation procedures, and methods to reduce issues)
  • Deployment and field experience
  • Field trials and demonstrations
  • Economic analysis
  • Industry standards
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Category 5. Fibers and Optical Propagation Effects
This category focuses on all aspects of optical fibers including their design, fabrication, and physical properties.  State-of-the-art telecom transmission fibers are typically silica glass-based single mode fibers. Research continues to approach the fundamental loss limit while at the same time increasing power handling capabilities by increasing the fiber’s effective area (i.e. spreading the optical power over a larger area) and therefore reducing Kerr effect-induced nonlinear impairments. Also receiving a lot of interest are optical fibers with reduced bend sensitivity (i.e. bending induced loss) to enable wire‑like installation. 

The degree to which group velocity dispersion and birefringence can be manipulated in silica-based fibers is limited by a low core-cladding index contrast. Much higher index contrasts can be achieved in micro‑structured optical fibers where the core can be surrounded by air or other materials. Of particular interest are photonic crystal fibers where the micro‑structure surrounding the core has a periodic lattice, allowing a departure from light guiding by total internal reflection and instead confining light to the core through a photonic bandgap.  Even hollow core fibers become possible with this concept. 

Other specialty fibers include optical fibers based on glass materials other than silica, e.g. fluorite, phosphate, or chalcogenide glasses.  Kerr-related nonlinearities are significantly enhanced in these fibers, which allows for all optical signal processing and related device applications including ultrafast optical switching, super‑continuum generation, and many others. 

Approaches to increase the total capacity per fiber are multi‑core optical fibers using space division multiplexing or transmission on several modes in multi‑mode fibers using mode division multiplexing. Research also continues into multi‑mode fibers and plastic optical fiber for low-cost applications and short-reach data connections. Record bandwidth and transmission distance continue to increase from year to year. 

Besides the physical properties of optical fibers, Category 5 also focuses on the physics of light propagation in optical fiber and free space. In glass fibers, Kerr-induced nonlinear effects such as self‑phase modulation, cross‑phase modulation, or four‑wave mixing lead to a multitude of phenomena. The interaction of self-phase modulation with dispersion for example creates quasi particles termed solitons with rich properties. Of fundamental importance are also cooperative light scattering processes in optical fibers such as Rayleigh, Brillouin and Raman scattering where photons scatter of impurities, acoustical and optical phonons (lattice vibrations), respectively, presenting a limit to lower loss or high-power handling capability. 

Topics include:

  • Optical fiber design and fabrication
  • Specialty optical fibers
  • Fibers for high power applications
  • Microstructured fibers
  • Photonic bandgap fibers
  • Non-silica fibers
  • Sub-micron waveguides
  • Propagation effects in fiber and free space
  • Nonlinear effects including solitons and scattering in fibers
  • Propagation related transmission impairments
  • Dispersion and polarization related effects in fibers
  • Fiber characterization and measurement techniques
  • Fibers for switching and non-linear optical processing
  • Optical meta-materials
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Category 6. Fiber and Waveguide Based Devices: Amplifiers, Lasers, Sensors, and Performance Monitors
Devices and device configurations have been an enabling factor, playing an integral part in the development of optical communication and sensor systems for decades. New directions are now emerging within other areas of photonics that equally are likely to benefit from a strong focus and further advances in fiber and waveguide device technology.

Category 6 covers most aspects of fiber- and waveguide-based optical device technology and techniques using these technologies for performance monitoring within all optical systems. Many papers focus on optical fiber amplifier technologies of all types, covering areas in both telecom and non-telecom applications. In 2011 we hope to see a number of submissions describing new amplifier configurations for future optical transmission bands. Another substantial part of the committee focuses on light sources in optical fibers and waveguides. These sources include fiber lasers ranging from moderate-power low-noise single-frequency configurations to very high-power systems based on virtually any gain material, and broadband sources including supercontinuum and amplified spontaneous emission systems. We welcome all contributions discussing advances in these areas. All aspects of optical sensing are another focus of the committee’s activities. We consider, for example, sensors for application in extreme environments, and sensor configurations for very high precision temperature and strain measurements. Sensors for use in biomedical applications are also welcome.

Specific areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Optical amplifier design
  • Glass fiber and planar waveguide amplifiers
  • Rare-earth doped fiber and waveguide amplifiers
  • Raman and Brillouin fiber amplifiers
  • Optical parametric fiber amplifiers
  • Hybrid fiber and planar optical amplifiers
  • Optical amplifiers with automatic gain control
  • Optical fiber and planar waveguide lasers for telecom and non-telecom applications
  • Supercontinuum sources and applications
  • Silicon lasers, amplifiers and sensors
  • Optical sensors, including LIDAR
  • Biophotonic devices and device configurations, including internal sensors and external monitoring systems
  • Fiber and waveguide Bragg gratings and long period gratings for pulse-shaping, signal measurement and sensing
  • Poled fibers and waveguides for frequency conversion, signal measurement and sensing applications
  • Novel devices for signal measurement and sensing
  • Optical performance monitoring techniques and devices
  • Measurement of wavelength, power, and state of polarization
  • Astrophotonic applications of fiber and waveguide technologies
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Category 7. Optical Devices for Switching, Filtering, and Signal Compensation
One of main topics for this category is wavelength selective switch (WSS). WSS technology mainly realized by free space optics was introduced in the real optical network during the past 5 years. However, the current existing network is still colored ROADM due to some technology limitations and cost constraints. Therefore, this category focuses on and discusses how to realize the future network requirements such as colorless, directionless, and contentionless ROADM.

Another important topic for Category 7 is high-speed optical modulators and integrated receiver optics regarding the coherent optical transmission technology. Several 100 Gbit/s transmissions in the field were demonstrated and the first 100Gb/s network deployment was also announced at last year. Due to emerging importance of the topic, this category focuses especially on hybrid integration technique to realize 100 Gbit/s or higher bit-rate optical transmission.

Moreover, this category also pays attention to various types of waveguide technologies using indium phosphide (InP) or silicon (Si) materials for the wavelength routing and other important optical functions in the future optical network.

Topics include:

  • Photonic bandgap and nano-optic devices
  • Attenuators and gain equalization filters
  • Spectral interleavers and banding filters
  • CWDM and DWDM multiplexers and demultiplexers
  • Wavelength add/drop switches and tunable filters
  • Wavelength-selective switches
  • Optical switches including cross connects
  • Thin film filters
  • Passive optical interconnects
  • Waveguide power splitters and couplers
  • Optical devices for dispersion or distortion compensation
  • PMD compensation and emulation techniques
  • Characterization of photonic components
  • Other novel devices for signal compensation
  • Polarization control and polarization conversion devices
  • Etalon and ring resonator based devices
  • Planar lightwave circuit devices
  • Hybrid integrated devices
  • Waveguide materials and theory
  • Free-space optical devices
  • Microelectromechanical (MEMS) devices
  • Devices for OCDMA
  • Acousto-optic devices
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Category 8. Optoelectronic Devices
The Optoelectronic Devices Category covers active devices and components for optical communications.  Many functions are covered: optical sources and modulators for transmission; optical amplifiers, switches, wavelength converters, and nonlinear devices to manipulate light; and detectors and receivers to reconvert optical signals back to the electrical domain. The integration level is also broad, ranging from novel single devices to highly-integrated photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and complete packaged modules. The methods and techniques for building active components are also under this category, from epitaxial growth and fabrication to novel packaging and device and module reliability testing.

The dynamic technical sessions are exciting and continue to showcase unprecedented achievements in optoelectronic devices. A sampling of recent highlights includes multi-channel multi-wavelength InP PICs, Si/Ge APDs, ultrafast receivers for coherent links, 40 Gb/s VCSELs, and novel Si photonic modulator and detectors..

Topics include:

  • Lasers (including external cavity lasers)
  • Modulators
  • Detectors
  • Semiconductor optical amplifiers
  • Wavelength converters
  • Nonlinear devices
  • Semiconductor-based switches
  • Optoelectronic hybrid and monolithic integration
  • Optoelectronic fabrication and epitaxy
  • Device packaging
  • Optoelectronic device testing and reliability
  • Optical burst/packet switching devices
  • Picosecond and femtosecond devices
  • Sources and modulators for optical interconnects
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Category 9. Digital Transmission Systems
Communication systems underpin much of modern society, enabling electronic communication via a variety of media, including internet, mobile communications, and video content distribution. Recent achievements have included the demonstration of transmission capacities in excess of 50 Tbit/s on a single fiber. Communication demands for a small country, however, already exceed aggregate capacities of 10 Tbit/s. Transmission reaches range from a few hundred kilometers within urban areas to many tens of thousands kilometers for submarine links.

This category provides a platform for the discussion of the latest modeling, demonstration, and implementation of overall digital optical communication transmission systems. Contributions to this category define the current factors that limit the capacity and/or reach of an overall optical communication system and propose methods to increase the limits. Recent submissions to the category have included the transmission of polarization multiplexed QAM signals including digital coherent reception and electronic signal processing. These demonstrations often combine a variety of recent innovations in advanced optical communication subsystems. On occasion demonstrations reach, or even exceed, commonly held fundamental limits—such as the capacity limit of a discrete memory-less channel.

Developments of existing techniques and new approaches to increase the overall performance of a communication system are welcome.

Contributed papers are solicited concerning, but not limited to, any aspect of the design or demonstration of overall optical communication systems. In particular contributions related to the following areas are welcome:

  • Techniques and algorithms for the numerical modeling of transmission systems, and the use of such models to explore methods to increase the reach or capacity, or to reduce the cost of a complete communication network
  • Transmission system experiments, including WDM and high speed systems, ultra long haul transmission systems, capacity records, unrepeatered and festoon demos and  transmission studies of advanced formats
  • Information-theoretic limits to communication including forward error correction, modulation formats and the impact and mitigation of the nonlinear response of the transmission medium
  • Investigation of practical limits to system performance, and techniques to minimize the impact of the limits. Limits include polarization effects, non-linear effects and fiber nonlinearities
  • Free space optical communication experiments, simulations and theoretical analyses
  • Quantum communications, including quantum key distribution
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Category 10. Transmission Subsystems and Network Elements
Historically there has been an exponential increase in optical communication data rates, enabled by disruptive technologies at the subsystem level. This has ranged from optical amplified WDM systems in the 1990s to the more recent coherent transmission systems in which digital coherent receivers have caused a revolution in the design of optical transmission systems, allowing for example 100 Gbit/s to be transmitted over fiber which, using traditional methods, could not support 10 Gbit/s.

This category provides a platform for the discussion of the latest modeling, demonstration, and implementation of individual subsystems and network elements used to realize optical communications systems and networks. Contributions to this category define the current factors that limit the efficacy and performance of individual subsystems and network elements as well as methods to improve performance. Recent submissions to the category have included real-time implementation of digital coherent reception and electronic signal processing, as well as algorithms and techniques that improve the power efficacy of such subsystems.

Contributed papers are solicited concerning, but not limited to, any aspect of the design and performance of individual subsystems and network elements used to implement optical communications systems and networks. In particular contributions related to the following areas would be welcome:

  • Transmitter and receivers subsystems, including the techniques required for realization. This includes algorithms for the implementation of equalization, as well as timing and carrier recovery for digital coherent receivers and methods for implementing forward error correction
  • Optical parameter and performance monitoring methods and subsystems
  • Electrical subsystems including the technology, design  and performance of multiplexing and demultiplexing subsystems and analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion subsystems
  • Network elements for traffic grooming and multiplexing including, cross-connects, add-drop multiplexer and gain-equalization subsystems, and other aspects of network nodes, such as their design, performance, and control
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Category 11. Optical Processing and Analog Subsystems
The Optical Processing and Analog Subsystems technical area solicits papers on recent advances in all-optical processing of signals, analog optical subsystems, and optical subsystems for non-telecom applications. Topics in these areas can generally be divided into three multidisciplinary sub-areas: optical processing, microwave photonics, and radio-over-fiber systems.

Optical processing is concerned with the use of optical techniques for realizing devices and subsystems to perform functions for communications systems as well as defense and non-telecom application systems that are elusive to solutions from all-electronic methods. Research in this field includes the use of linear optics and nonlinear optics methods to solve a diverse set of issues including efficient wavelength conversion and channel routing, optical regeneration and optical clock recovery, adaptive impairment compensation including group velocity dispersion (GVD) and polarization mode dispersion (PMD), as well as optical packet switching, and high channel count multiplexing and demultiplexing. 

Microwave photonics is concerned with interactions between the optical and the microwave portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, where the term “microwave” includes radio frequencies (~10 MHz to 1 GHz), microwave frequencies (~1 GHz to 30 GHz), millimeter-wave frequencies (~30 GHz to 500 GHz), and terahertz frequencies (~500 GHz to 10 THz). Microwave photonic techniques, devices, and systems enable the generation, transmission, detection, processing, and control of microwave signals required for many of the advanced systems and system concepts of today and the future. The field of microwave photonics will continue to impact a diverse set of applications including RF sensing systems, novel antenna systems and antenna remoting, as well as high speed instrumentation and measurement systems and numerous emerging technologies (biomedical, terahertz, ultrawideband, ultrastable frequency metrology, high speed analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion, …).

The radio-over-fiber sub-area is concerned with the development and improvement of broadband wireless communication systems and networks. Here many of the microwave photonic, optical processing, and fiber signal transport techniques are merged with digital electronics and electronic wireless techniques to significantly improve the availability, accessibility, reliability, and affordability of wireless communication networks. The potential for the modulation transparent and mixed format interconnection of wireless cells using optical networks will allow for the efficient deployment of new radio cells and/or upgrading of existing wireless networks without incurring the excessive costs of new fiber plant or central station upgrades. This sub-area focuses on physical layer technology advances and challenges required to realize these benefits.

Topics include:

  • Optical wavelength conversion subsystems
  • Optical regeneration and clock recovery subsystems
  • Optical multiplexing and demultiplexing subsystems
  • Optical adaptive impairment compensation subsystems, including GVD and PMD
  • Optical packet switching/burst switching subsystems
  • Photonic signal processing including ADC and DAC
  • Non-linear optical signal processing
  • Microwave photonics
  • Multichannel video subsystems
  • Optical subsystems for defense and non-telecom applications
  • Radio over fiber subsystems
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Category 12. Core Networks
Core transport networks underlie the range of telecommunications services that underpin today’s society—ranging from private line connectivity between large enterprise sites, Internet connectivity, mobile communications, and video delivery. As these services continue to grow and evolve at impressive rates, so must core transport networks.

This massive growth in traffic and increasing economic pressures are fueling core transport network evolution.  ROADM technologies have seen wide-scale commercial deployment in recent years to realize large-scale all-optical core networks. Bandwidth on demand is also now a reality in commercial deployments. 

The Core Networks category focuses on research and innovation required to advance core transport networks. This covers the architecture, design, and operation of all-optical and opto-electronic core transport networks, and their integration with higher layer services. Contributed papers are solicited concerning, but not limited to, any aspect of the design, performance, and management of core transport networks and their applications. We particularly encourage submissions focused on new areas and cutting-edge innovations.

Topics include:

  • Network architecture and design
  • Optical packet, burst and circuit-switching technologies and networks
  • Algorithms for resource management (e.g. routing, wavelength allocation, PCE)
  • Techniques for network modeling and simulation
  • Traffic grooming, including multi-granularity switching
  • Highly resilient core architectures and failure recovery mechanisms
  • Network performance
  • Network control and management  (single and multi-domain networks)
  • Carrier-grade Ethernet for core networks
  • Data-aware photonic networks (e.g. IP/WDM)
  • Optical grids
  • Optical networks for the future Internet
  • Core networks for the delivery of higher layer services (IPTV, mobility)
  • Energy efficiency in the core
  • Network experiments
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Category 13. Access Networks
There has been growing research interest in access networks in recent years as a result of the rapid growth of the Internet as well as the increasing demand for broadband services. Many diverse technologies have been studied and developed to eliminate the bandwidth bottleneck between end-users and the core network. Besides increasing the capacity, the demands for next-generation access networks also include smooth integration with heterogeneous networks such as wireless broadband networks, home networks, and storage networks, as well as energy efficiency.

Category 13 focuses on long-term research and innovation in network architectures and protocols for optical access networks, including network design and networking aspects of the constituent elements and systems. Novel optical and hybrid access network architectures and enabling devices and subsystem technologies, such as advanced modulation formats, DSP-based transmission, direct detection and coherent receiver, that will increase bandwidth capacity, reduce cost and power consumption, and provide new service are the main focus for this category.

Topics include:

  • Optical access network architecture, design, control, and management
  • High speed optical access networks and applications
  • Future PON architectures, including WDM-PON and OFDMA-PON
  • Radio over fiber access networks
  • Hybrid wireless-optical networks
  • Wireless (free-space) access networks
  • Long-reach broadband access networks
  • OCDMA networks
  • Optical Ethernet
  • Novel access techniques, including DSP based optical access
  • Energy efficient optical access networks
  • Optics in home area networks, local area networks, storage area networks
  • Optical access system reliability and security
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Category 14. Datacom, Computercom, and Short Range and Experimental Optical Networks
This category addresses two wide and diverse areas with the goal to emphasize the important experimental developments in the field of optical networking for support of novel services/applications and to capture research areas that are nonconventional and of emerging importance for optical technologies. Therefore, this category captures on one hand topics that relate with experimental demonstrations of the latest research ideas of optical networking and on the other it addresses topics related with novel optical technologies in non-telecom application areas.

The application of optical technologies for datacom and computercom has recently attracted great attention. Distributed massive scale "cloud computing" will require new developments in the field of optical communication technologies and networking. Cloud-computing basically makes use of the Internet to connect remote users to massive, warehouse-scale data centers that house large networks of processors and memory for crunching and storing data; and as a result requires new solutions/technologies to support it in a cost-effective and power-efficient manner. Performance gains in huge computing power machines are increasingly achieved through interconnecting large numbers of parallel processors/nodes. The resulting demands on communication bandwidth are extremely challenging, with the computer backplane or the telecom terminal backplane looming as one of the primary bottlenecks to information transfer. Within the next decade, it is expected that exaflop-scale machines will be produced and will incorporate well over 1 million optical interconnects.

The increasing bandwidth demands of emerging computing platforms and cloud computing has started attracting significant research activities into photonic interconnects. Photonic interconnects provide a solution to the problems of low-bandwidth/throughput, low power consumption, and diminishing communication radius in volume servers, but cost considerations dictate a very different photonic infrastructure than is found in other applications. Traditional datacom transceiver technology is too costly, bulky, and power hungry to support the future scale of deployment. A new class of optimized short-reach, low-power, and low-cost optical interconnects must therefore be developed to enable next-generation large-scale systems and address the computercom interconnect challenge. The research community must focus on the study of the potential use of emerging optical technologies that promise to enable massive amounts of short-reach interconnect bandwidth at low-cost, with low-power consumption, a high area density, and potential for future scalability.

Topics include:

  • Optical network experiments
  • PON and WDM-PON network experiments
  • Optical transmission experiments (over installed fiber plants)
  • Optical network control plane experiments
  • Optical packet switching and optical burst switching network experiments
  • Network measurement and traffic characterization techniques
  • Demonstrations of non-telecom optical network applications
  • Novel applications of optical fiber communication technologies in non-telecom areas
  • Distributed optical computer networks
  • Optical backplanes and computer-room connectivity
  • Leading-edge optical interconnects for data and computer communications
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