OFC/NFOEC Organizers

Optical
Communications
in 2012
Progress in optical
communications is being
driven by an explosion of new
applications and services. This
article describes the current
state of the field as seen by the
organizers of the upcoming
OFC/NFOEC conference.

42 | OPN Optics & Photonics News

www.osa-opn.org

Thinkstock

fter a long period of malaise brought on by the collapse of the tech bubble and
recent turmoil in the global fi nancial markets, optical communication has
returned to the familiar territory of rapid business cycles modulating a background of growth.
As we approach the theoretical capacity of optical fiber in inter-city links, we will soon be
using technology that seemed impossible five years ago. We are struggling to meet the bandwidth demands in access networks at the required cost. Meanwhile, for many countries, getting
broadband communications to nearly all homes is the goal. The optical layer in networks is
gaining intelligence that will facilitate greater efficiency and enhance services. However, it also
results in greater complexity in network operations.
The distinction between customer and carrier is blurring. This years OFC/NFOEC (Optical Fiber Conference/National Fiber Optics Engineers Conference) in Los Angeles, Calif.,
U.S.A., from 4-8 March will feature a plenary talk by Googles Milo Medin, who will discuss
his companys experiences in optical networking. A significant fraction of all optical links are
used for back-plane connections in data centers and in high-performance computers because
the compactness and capacity of optical communication has become indispensible in the design
of large data-handling systems. Greg Papadopoulos will deliver a plenary talk discussing the
design of an exascale computer.
The recent earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan reminded us that sophisticated hardware and softwareand all the glorious services they enablecan be quickly brought to a halt,
leaving face-to-face conversation as the only option for communication. A plenary talk by Isao
Sugino of Japans Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications will discuss the damage
and the restoration of service in Japan as well as some of the many lessons that were learned
about disaster recovery and disaster-resistant design.
Th is article is organized to provide highlights of all aspects of optical networks. It will
start with networks, then look at applications and services, and conclude with components.
The discussion is a collection of contributions from the organizers of OFC/NFOEC, which is
the largest forum on optical communications. For more information about the conference,
visit www.ofcnfoec.org.

Access networks
Fiber to the x (FTTx, where x can be home, premises, business, curb, etc.) has been deployed
in many countries around the world, especially in East Asia and North America. Time division
multiplexing (TDM) passive optical networks (PONs) such as ITU-T-standardized Gigabit
PON (GPON) or IEEE-standardized 1G Ethernet PON (EPON) has been deployed widely in
these regions. Subscriber numbers are rapidly increasing as the deployed technology becomes
more cost-effective by incorporating advances in the endpoint electronics as well as the outsideplant optical components and processes.
In many countries, providers want to evolve to next-generation access platforms such as 10G
PON1, next-generation PON2, 10G-EPON or wave-division multiplexing (WDM) systems.
There is much interest among optical engineers in figuring out which platform to deploy; this
will be explored in one of the conference workshops. Soon to be released commercially are XGPON and 10G-EPON, which have smooth migration scenarios and good backward compatibility and coexistence with the deployed PON.
Farther in the future are 100G-class PONs with flexible bandwidth allocation, such as WDMstacked TDM-PONs and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexed PONs with advanced
modulation formats that use recent digital signal processing technology. The use of large-capacity

January 2012 | 43
1047-6938/12/01/42/6-$15.00 OSA

PONs, wide-area PONs and large-split

PONs is expected to reduce the operators capital expenditure and operating
expense. It is important to achieve a large
optical budgetthrough, for example,
burst-mode amplification or cost-effective
coherent detection techniques.
We anticipate that the fiber-optic
community will be tremendously
interested in next-generation mobile
backhaul networks. As mobile applications explode, and the density of mobile
base stations increases to approach that
of PON optical network units, the use
of high capacity PONs for mobile backhaul becomes attractive. That will drive
research into synchronizing techniques
and achieving low delay for access networks, and it will also lead to the convergence of wired and wireless services.
Among the important issues to be
addressed in invited talks are how to
adequately monitor and protect PONs
and to reduce power consumption in
networks. The conference will also
include reports on the status of fiber to
the premises in Africa and South America; recent experiences and plans going
forward in Germany and the United
States; and an update on Chinas experience. Workshops will explore mobile
backhaul and green networking. Other
topics to be explored include the drivers
of the explosion in bandwidth needs
from residential and business subscribers, the architecture options within the
home to enable Gigabit bandwidths,
and business applications for PONs.

Beyond 100 terabits/second

At last years OFC/NFOEC, meeting
participants demonstrated 100-Tbit/s
fiber transmission capacity. But its
unclear where we will go from here:
Further incremental improvements in
error-correcting codes, fiber loss and
core area, and perhaps usable bandwidth
are unlikely to provide even a tenfold
increase in capacity. Yet traffic growth
trends suggest that this expansion will
be needed within 5 to 10 years. The
beyond-100-Tb/s symposium will consider technologies and techniques that
may allow a solution to this dilemma.

44 | OPN Optics & Photonics News

Widespread adoption
of single-mode optics
in data centers may
be driven by increases
in WDM capability,
extended reach and the
prospect of optically
switched networks.
Spatial multiplexing, with and without multiple-input multiple-output
(MIMO) signal processing, seems to be
a promising solution to this problem, as
demonstrated by the 2011 reports of two
independent 100-Tbit/s class 7-core fiber
systems. The symposium will include a
discussion of the theoretical limitations
on capacity and techniques for bringing
the benefit of optical amplification to
spatially multiplexed systems.

Digital transmission
Transport capacity scaling and the
utmost flexibility of the network are at
the heart of concurrent optical transmission systems research. Topics include digital signal processing, increased spectral
efficiency transmission, enhanced impairment mitigation and spatial multiplexing
using MIMO techniques. Researchers
are reporting exciting results on higherorder quadrature amplitude modulation,
software-defined transponders, forward
error correction, polarization-dependent
transmission impairments, free-space
communications through the turbulent
atmosphere, parametric processing and
quantum communications, all of which
will be subjects of invited talks at the
conference. In-depth tutorials by Sebastien Bigo and Sander Jansen will review
coherent long-haul fiber transmission
and advanced multi-carrier modulation.

Core networks
Core transport networks are continually evolving in response to relentless
traffic increases, economic pressures and

innovations in services, including recent

enhancements in private-line connectivity between data centers and large enterprise sites, Internet connectivity, mobile
communications and video delivery.
The expanded use of cloud technologies,
which allow customers to acquire and
discard resources instantly, has been
facilitated by network virtualization
as George Rouskas will discuss during a
conference tutorial.
Recent core transport technology
advances include deployment of multidegree reconfigurable optical add/drop
multiplexer (ROADM) technologies
to realize large-scale all-optical core
networks. The offloading of traffic from
the transport layer (higher) to the optical layer (lower) can reduce expensive
optical-electrical/electrical-optical
(OE/EO) conversions and minimize
power consumption. Packet-aware transport that uses optical channel data unit
(ODU) cross-connect systems has also
been developed to allow more flexible
sub-lambda level grooming.
The imminent standardization of
flexible-grid WDM systems will allow for
spectral efficiency to be enhanced due to
the allocation of channel bandwidth in
order to match data-transport demands.
It will also allow for grooming at the
optical level. At a conference workshop,
speakers and attendees will discuss
this hot topic and its impact on system
performance as well as networking,
transmission and component technologies. Equipment and component vendors
and network operators will deliver their
visions of the future and highlight the
challenges of new technologies, which
will include flexible and automated reconfiguration, failure detection and recovery,
network upgradeability, ease of network
planning, control and management, and
overall cost and power efficiency.

Datacom and computercom

In the summer of 2011, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a Request for
Information to find out more about
whether various suppliers could build
an exa-scale (1018 operations per second)
supercomputer within the next decade.

www.osa-opn.org

The request explicitly calls for advances

in optical technologies that will be
required to support a 3.2-Tb/s bidirectional processor module input/output at
power efficiencies of only a few pJ/bit.
The challenges presented by these
aggressive targets highlight on a grand
scale key trends in the data communications and computer interconnects field:
the drive toward ever-higher speeds
while power and the cost of optical links
are simultaneously reduced. A tutorial by Alan Benner will illustrate the
system design challenges associated with
these ambitious specifications for optics
in supercomputers. Beyond high-end
computing systems, data centers are also
becoming increasingly more interconnected in order to maximize performance and reconfigurabilitya trend
that also motivates the development of
new architectures and underpinning
optical technologies.
Widespread adoption of singlemode optics in data centers may be
driven by increases in WDM capability, extended reach and the prospect of
optically switched networks. Until then,
multi-mode optics continues to be a
successful incumbent technology. These
issuesand the role of optics in data
centerswill be examined in a workshop with a panel of industry experts and
a tutorial by Amin Vahdat of The University of California San Diego/Google.

Optical network
applications and services
Societys continuing need for bandwidth
is driving new services into networks.
In addition, services and networks are
becoming more dynamic, and they need
to support multi-layer demands, necessitating that more work be done on the
control plane and that new requirements
be added.
Thus, it is critical that the research
community keep an eye on the new
services and optical needs that are
emerging, including cloud services,
distributed computing and low-cost
wireless backhaul. Two invited talks at
the conference will focus on some very

Market Watch and the Service

Provider Summit

Thinkstock

high-tech emerging services. A tutorial

on OpenFlow will help to explore some
of what this might mean to network
designers in terms of bandwidth and
new requirements.
Service/data center providers and
equipment suppliers alike are looking at
ways to efficiently deploy their equipment
so that it will be ready for new services.
At the same time, they want to prevent
the scenario in which a glut of expensive
equipment is sitting in wait. Optimizing
multi-layer networks is a challenge, with
many ways of making the layers work
and blending packet technologies and
optical technologies together.
Finding ways to best support these
networks and meet the service needs is
very dependent on the mix of services,
the costs of the interfaces and equipment, and the view of how the future
will evolve. Some competing methods
include packet-aware layer 1 networks,
optical transport network (OTN)
switching, generalized multi-protocol
label switching (GMPLS)-based control
planes, etc. The tradeoffs of the various
designs, and each carriers view of their
drivers and economics is key to helping
equipment suppliers and component
suppliers do the right development for
the future. At this years conference,
China Telecomm, Korea Telecomm,
AT&T and Telefonica will all share
their network drivers and designs in a
series of invited talks.

The Market Watch program at the conference presents an ecosystem view, linking the complex relationships between
carriers, system vendors and component
suppliers. In addition to discussing
the latest technology, the speakers will
describe the drivers of market demand,
product uptake and roadmaps. A state
of the industry panel will provide
an overview. Two application-centric
panels will focus on high-speed access:
PON and mobile broadband. The two
technology-centric panels will look at
what is enabled by advanced integrated
photonics and 100G transmission,
respectively, across applications ranging
from supercomputers, data centers, and
inter-office and core networks.
The Service Provider Summit at
OFC/NFOEC is a forum that enables
leading service providers to share their
vision with their peers and to engage
with the research and vendor communities. In a keynote address, Stuart Elby
will describe Verizons target network
architecture based on the needs of cloud
computing as a service. Then, a panel
will discuss efforts to flatten hierarchical network architectures in order to
reduce cost. Operators from around the
world will compare their perspectives
and experiences based on their different
circumstances. A second panel will look
at what the role of the network could
or should become in the future, given
the rise of social media as a dominant
application set.

Fiber
A massive global interest is focused on
bypassing the capacity limits of current
fibers by developing radically new forms
of transmission fiberin particular
multicore and multimode fibers for
spatial division multiplexing. This could
increase significantly the number of
information channels in a single strand
of fiber, requiring new approaches to
fiber design, fabrication and characterization. Ji Wang will present a tutorial
on current and emerging approaches to

January 2012 | 45

fiber fabrication, and Vincent Lecouche

will do likewise on fiber characterization
techniques with an emphasis on installed
cables. Spatial-division multiplexing
issues will also be covered in a workshop and special symposium.
A more near-term approach to
increasing fiber capacity is to reduce
nonlinearity by increasing the mode
area, as discussed by Marianne BigotAstruc. An alternative is to attempt
to reduce both nonlinearity and loss
with hollow-core photonic band gap
fibers (PBGFs), as described by Francesco Poletti. Solid-core PBGF variants
continue to be incorporated in device
applications due to the in-line filtering,
dispersion and nonlinearity control they
offer; this will be reviewed by Thomas
Alkeskjold. Researchers are also intensely interested in fibers that use non-silica
glasses and/or that incorporate additional materials into their structure.
They offer a host of new opportunities
in telecommunications, sensors and
lasers. Jean Luc Adam will describe
recent progress in chalcogenide fibers,
while Ayman Abouraddy discusses the
incredible advances that have been made
in multimaterial fibers and their most
exciting applications.

Fiber and waveguide devices

The economic rationale of multi-mode
and multi-core systems relies on their
amplifiers. These amplifiers must offer
adequate performance at a cost lower
than the multiple single-mode amplifiers
they replace. Therefore, they are a critical
focus of research.
Researchers are very interested in
amplifiers that operate outside the gain
bandwidth of erbium-doped silica as
well as phase-sensitive amplifiers and
alternative approaches to increasing fiber
capacity. Recent experimental results
suggest that the latter may provide a
modest improvement in system performance. Peter Andrekson, Radan
Slavik, Colin McKinstrie and Bill Kuo
will discuss different aspects of these
amplifiers and parametric amplifiers in
general. Peter Krummrich will discuss
multi-mode/multi-mode amplifiers, and

46 | OPN Optics & Photonics News

20 m
(Top) The end of a hollow-core photonic
band-gap fiber. (Bottom) Details of the
structure, which, when compared to
solid-core fibers, offers the possibility
of lower loss, lower nonlinearity and
lower effective index, providing lower
transmission delay.
Courtesy of Marco Petrovich, Southampton University

Evgeny Dianov will deliver a tutorial on

doped amplifiers operating outside the
C and L bands.

Optical devices for switching,

filtering and signal compensation
Silicon photonics became a hot topic
a few years ago, when researchers realized that passive optical devices could be
made with the ubiquitous complementary
metal-oxide semiconductor processing.
Today, the technology is poised to have a
large impact on optical interconnects by
providing low cost, high data rates and
low power consumption. Recent progress
in optical devices and systems is enabling
cost-effective, agile ROADM architectures for optical networks, working
towards gridless ROADM.
Researchers have made much progress
in developing advanced format modulators by using thin-film polymers, as
well as hybrid configurations with silica
planar lightwave circuits (PLCs) and
LiNbO3 (LN) phase modulators. At the
conference, Gianlorenzo Masini will
review silicon photonic transceivers for
optical interconnects, and the progress

that has been made towards commercialization. Roel Baets will talk about
various silicon photonics integration
platforms, while Jean-marc Fedeli will
review the latest developments in silicon
photonics devices and integration.
Tom Koch will do an exhaustive
review of III-V and silicon photonics in
a tutorial. A workshop will assess the
impact of silicon photonics on network
architecture. Tom Strasser will explore
approaches for gridless ROADMs, while
Toshio Watanabe will discuss silica-based
PLC transponder aggregators for colorless, direction-less, and contention-less
ROADMs. Takashi Goh will address
flexible format modulators using PLC LN
hybrid technology, and Raluca Dinus will
discuss new approaches, including small
form-factor, thin-film polymer modulators for telecom applications.

Plasmonics
The exciting field of plasmonics may
provide a solution for next-generation
chip-scale optical interconnects. This relatively new discipline has been progressing
rapidly. It relies on the propagation of
electromagnetic waves along a metaldielectric interface. It offers strong mode
confinement with, in principle, high photonic integration densities and low energy
consumption. Exascale processors will
require optical interconnects with unprecedented metrics in these properties.
The conference will explore this
technology in a symposium. Pioneers
of the field will discuss challenges and
opportunities across all relevant aspects
of plasmonic interconnects, spanning
from plasmonic circuit fabrication up
to system-level applications. Sergey
Bozhevolnyi will present an overview of
plasmonic waveguide platforms and their
prospects for applications in the datacom
industry. Anatolyi Zayats will review the
field of active plasmonics for compensating the high plasmonic propagation
losses and enabling the manipulation of
plasmons. Marc Brongersma will discuss
the fundamental principles of plasmons,
outlining their potential to act as the
next-generation interconnect platform.
Finally, Jung Jin Ju will review the data
www.osa-opn.org

transmission characteristics of longrange plasmonic waveguides.

Optoelectronic devices and

photonic integration
Each of the following factors is driving
the development of photonic integration
circuits (PICs) for core networks: the
trend toward phase-dependent modulation formats and increasing capacity, the
anticipated rise of 400G and the need
for a small footprint. New generations
of optoelectronic devices and PICs offer
flexibility in wavelength, bandwidth and
modulation formats. Photonic integration
is becoming increasingly important in
short-reach applications because data-center operators rely on optics to transport
huge amounts of data. Microprocessor
manufacturers may soon follow suit.
There is rapidly growing interest in
components that are adapted to the new
multi-core or spatial-mode multiplexing
schemes. As always, we see continuous
improvement in the energy consumption,
speed and package density of existing
concepts. Rajeev Ram will provide an
overview of the newest developments in
silicon photonic integrated circuits, while
Di Lang will focus on the integration of
optical sources into silicon. A workshop
will examine the challenges of packaging and assembly of PICs, a crucial topic
ignored too often by chip researchers.
PICs, whether hybrid or monolithic, and whether they are based on
silicon, InP or a polymercan only
be as good as the components that are
being integrated. The conference will
feature reports on improvements in such
well-known concepts as vertical-cavity
surface-emitting lasers (M.C. Amann),
high-power photo-diodes (Jin-Wee Shi)
or polymer modulators (Alan Willner), as
well as very early stage concepts such as
nanolasers (Constance Chang-Hasnain,
Shun Lien Chuang).

Transmission subsystems
and network elements
Increasing data rates and capacities as
well as ever more complex modulation
formats are placing severe demands on

The growing prevalence

of efficient, multilevel
modulation formats
is both a challenge
and an opportunity
for optical signal
processing systems.
underlying technologies. Clock recovery
and jitter tolerance are critical, analogto-digital/digital-to-analog conversion
technology is being pushed beyond the
state-of-the-art, and multilevel modulation formats have become important as
signal-to-noise ratios are squeezed, as has
post-detection spectral shaping in the
electrical domain.
The conference will include invited
talks on each of these underlying technologies by Han Sun, Markus Weber,
S. Chandrasekhar and Gabriella Bosco,
respectively. In addition, Maurice
OSullivan will discuss methods for
reaching 400G/1T on a single channel based on high spectral efficiency
and enabling subsystem concepts. Data
centers will require new optical subsystems; this topic will be addressed by
Casimir DeCusatis. In tutorials, Stephan
ten Brink, Andreas Leven and Bogdan
Szafraniec will discuss two extremely
important technologieserror correction and performance monitoring. Power
consumption, an increasingly important
metric, will be addressed in a workshop
that discusses the feasibility of a 3-Watt,
100G transponder.

Optical processing and

analog subsystems
As data rates increase in optical networks, the cost per channel of OE and
EO conversion increases while that of
all-optical processing remains more or
less constant. This has generated interest
in the latter technology. Nonlinear fiber
has provided the best performance for
signal processing in the past. Recently,

however, there has been a concentrated

effort to develop compact, integrated,
nonlinear optical waveguides to take
their place. The growing prevalence of
efficient, multilevel modulation formats
is both a challenge and an opportunity
for optical signal processing systems.
Recent demonstrations of phasesensitive optical amplification to reduce
impairment from optical amplifier noise
and demonstrations of optical regeneration of phase-modulated signals have
generated extreme interest in all-optical
processing. The increasing demand for
high-bandwidth wireless communication is motivating the greater use of
millimeter-wave communication bands
in the range of 60 to 100 GHz.
Optical fiber technologies are being
explored to meet the challenges of
generating, modulating, transmitting, processing and detecting these
mm-wave signals. The conference will
feature invited talks devoted to nonlinear optical processing systems in
optical fiber and silicon waveguides as
well as a workshop seeking to address
which material system will prove to be
the best for nonlinear signal processing. Another workshop will consider
future applications for all-optical signal
processing in multi-level systems. The
invited program will also include content on optical sampling, microwave
photonic filtering and optical techniques for mm-wave generation.
This article is just a snapshot of the
state of optical communications in the
autumn of 2011. The field is advancing
so rapidly that new advances will be
made by the time this article appears in
print. To stay up to date, be sure to register for OFC/NFOEC 2012 conference
in March. Visit www.ofcnfoec.org for
more information. Well see you there! t
Contributors include Nikola Alic, Solomon
Assefa, Keren Bergman, Yun Chung, Mehran
Esfandiari, Hans-Martin Foisel, Scott Hamilton,
Robert Jopson ([email protected]),
Karen Liu, Ed Murphy, Thomas Murphy,
Vincent O'Byrne, David Plant, Nikos Pleros,
Steve Plote, David Richardson, Ken-ichi
Sato, Martin Schell, Clint Schow, Vishnu
Shukla, Robert Tkach, Kathy Tse,
Member Peter Winzer and Naoto Yoshimoto.

January 2012 | 47