OFC 2023 show preview

• Sunday, March 5 marks the start of the Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) conference in San Diego, California
• The three General Chairs - Ramon Casellas, Chris Cole, and Ming-Jun Li - discuss the upcoming conference

OFC 2023 will be a show of multiple themes. That, at least, is the view of the team overseeing and coordinating this year's conference and exhibition.

General Chair Ming-Jun Li of Corning who is also the recipient of the 2023 John Tyndall Award (see profiles, bottom), begins by highlighting the 1,000 paper submissions, suggesting that OFC has returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Ramon Casellas, another General Chair, highlights this year's emphasis on the social aspects of technology. "We are trying not to forget what we are doing and why we are doing it," he says.

Casellas highlights the OFC's Plenary Session speakers (see section, below), an invited talk by Professor Dimitra Simeonidou of the University of Bristol, entitled: Human-Centric Networking and the Road to 6G, and a special event on sustainability.

This year's OFC has received more submissions on quantum communications totaling 66 papers.

In the past, papers on quantum communications were submitted across OFC's tracks addressing networking, subsystems and systems, and devices. However, evaluating them was challenging given that only some reviewers are quantum experts, says Chris Cole, the third General Chair. Now, OFC has a subcommittee dedicated to quantum.

Another first is OFCnet, a production network that will run during the show.

Themes and topics

Machine learning is one notable topic this year. The subject is familiar at OFC, says Casellas, but people are discussing it more.

Casellas highlights one session at OFC 2021 that addressed machine learning for optics and optics for machine learning. "It showed the duality of how you can use photonic components to do machine learning and apply machine learning to optimise networking," says Casellas.

This year there will be additional aspects of machine learning for networks, transmission, and operations, says Casellas.

Other General Chair highlighted subjects include point-to-multipoint coherent transmission, non-terrestrial and satellite networks, and optical switching and how its benefits networking in the data centre.

Google, for example, is presenting a paper detailing its use of optical switching in its data centres, something the hyperscaler disclosed at the ACM Sigcomm conference in August 2022.

There is also more interest in fibre sensors used in communications networks.

"We see an increasing trend because now if you want smart networks, you need sensors everywhere," says Li.

"That is another theme that goes across all the tracks, which is a non-traditional optical fibre communication area that we've been embracing," adds Cole.

As examples, Cole cites lidar, radio over fibre, free-space communications, microwave fibre sensing, and optical processing.

OFC has had contributions in these areas, he says, but now these topics have dedicated subcommittee titles.

Plenary session

This year's three Plenary Session speakers are:

• Patricia Obo-Nai, CEO of Vodafone Ghana, who will discuss Harnessing Digitalization for Effective Social Change,
• Jayshree V. Ullal, president and CEO of Arista Networks, addressing The Road to Petascale Cloud Networking,
• and Wendell P. Weeks, chairman and CEO of Corning, whose talk is entitled Capacity to Transform.

"We thought that having someone who could explain how technology improves society would be very positive," says Casellas. "I'm proud to have someone who can talk on the benefits of digitisation from the point of view of society, in addition to more technical topics."

Li highlights how OFC celebrated the 50th anniversary of low-loss fibre two years ago and that last year, OFC celebrated the year of glass, displaying information on panels.

Corning has played an important role in both technologies. "Having a speaker [Wendell Weeks] from a glass company talking about both will be interesting to the OFC audience," says Li.

Cole highlights the third speaker, Jayshree Ullal, the CEO of Arista. The successful networking player is one of the companies competing in what he describes as a very tough field.

Rump session

This year's Rump Session tackles silicon photonics, a session moderated by Daniel Kuchta of IBM TJ Watson Research Center and Michael Hochberg of Luminous Computing.

Cole says silicon photonics has received tremendous attention, and the Rump Session is asking some tough questions: "Is silicon photonics for real now? Is it just one of the guys in the toolbox? Or is it being sunsetted or supplemented?"

Cole expects a lively session, not just challenging conventional thinking but having people representing exciting alternatives which are commercially successful alongside silicon photonics.

Show interests

The Chairs also highlight their interests and what they hope to learn from the show.

For Li, it is high-density fibre and cable trends.

Work on space division multiplexing (SDM) - multicore and multimode - fibre has been an OFC topic for over 15 years. One question Li has is whether systems will use SDM.

"It looks like multicore fibre is close, but we want to learn more from customers," says Li.

Another interest is an alternative development of reduced coating diameter fibres that promise greater cable density. "I always think this is probably the short-term solution, but we'll see what people think," says Li.

AI drives interest in fibre density and latency issues in the data centre. Low latency is attracting interest in hollow-core fibre. Microsoft acquired Lumenisity, a UK hollow core fibre specialist, late last year.

Li is keen to learn more about quantum communications. "We want to understand, from a fibre component point of view, what to do in this area."

Until now industry focus has been on quantum key distribution (QKD), but Li wants to learn about other applications of quantum in telecoms.

The bandwidth challenge facing datacom is Cole's interest.

As the Rump Session shows, there has been an explosion of technologies to address data challenges, particularly in the data centre. "So I'm looking forward to continuing to see all the great ideas and all the different directions," says Cole.

Another show interest for Cole is start-ups in components, subsystems and systems, and networking.

At Optica's Executive Forum, held on Monday, March 6, a session is dedicated to start-ups. Casellas is looking forward to the talks on optical network automation.

Much work has applied machine learning to optical transmission and amplifier optimisation. Casellas wants to see how reinforcement learning is applied to optical network controllers. Telemetry and its use for network monitoring are another of his interests.

"Maybe because I'm an academic and idealistic, but I like everything related to disaggregation and the opening of interfaces," says Casellas, who too wants to learn more about quantum.

"I have a basic understanding of this, but maybe it is hard to get into something new," says Casellas. Non-terrestrial and satellite networks are other topics of interest.

Cole concludes with a big-picture view of photonics.

"It's a great time to be in optics," he says. "We're seeing an explosion of creativity in different areas to solve problems."

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Ramon Casellas works at the Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC) research institution in Barcelona, Spain. His research focuses on networks - particularly the control plane, operations and management - rather than optical systems and devices.

Ming-Jun Li is a Corporate Fellow at Corning where he has that worked for 32 years.

Li is also this year's winner of the John Tyndall Award, presented by Optica and the IEEE Photonics Society. The award is for Li's 'seminal contributions to advances in optical fibre technology.'

"It was a surprise to me and a great honour," says Li. "The work is not only for myself but for many people working with me at Corning; I cannot achieve without working with meaningful colleagues."

Chris Cole is a consultant whose background is in datacom optics. He will be representing the company, Coherent, at OFC.

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