Contributed papers are solicited in the following topical areas

1) Fibres, Fibre Devices, and Amplifiers

This area focuses on optical fibres, their fabrication and characterization, the physics of light propagation in optical fibres, fibre amplifiers and lasers, as well as fibre based devices for communication and sensor applications.

• Optical fibre design, and fabrication
• Splices, connectors, and fibre coupling
• Fibre characterization and measurement techniques
• Fibre-based dispersion compensation
• Specialty optical fibres
• Polymer optical fibres
• Highly nonlinear fibres
• Microstructure and photonic bandgap fibres
• Fibre-based devices (e.g., gratings, interferometers, sensors)
• Fibres for switching and nonlinear optical processing
• Propagation effects in fibres (including slow light)
• Nonlinear and polarization effects in fibres
• Raman, Brillouin, and parametric processes in fibre
• Optical fibre amplifiers
• Fibre lasers
• Supercontinuum sources
• Optical meta-materials

2) Waveguide and Optoelectronic Devices

This area focuses on the fabrication, performance testing, and reliability of devices and components used to generate, amplify, detect, switch, or process optical signals. Technologies include planar-waveguides, bulk-optics, and photonic bandgap structures based on various material systems.

• Optoelectronic devices: fabrication, integration, packaging, testing, and reliability
• Waveguide materials and fabrication
• Silicon Photonics
• Polymer waveguides
• Lithium Niobate devices
• Photonic bandgap devices
• MEMS-based devices
• Planar lightwave circuits (PLCs)
• Rare-earth doped waveguide amplifiers
• Semiconductor optical amplifiers
• Laser sources, detectors, and modulators
• Wavelength monitoring and wavelength locking devices
• Non-linear devices, regenerators, wavelength converters, and switches
• Dispersion compensation devices
• Polarization control and monitoring devices
• Optical performance monitoring devices
• Fixed or tunable filters and gain equalizers
• Reconfigurable Add Drop Multiplexer (ROADM) technologies
• On-chip optical communications
• Terahertz technologies
• Plasmonics

3) Subsystems and Network Elements for Optical Networks

This area focuses on the modelling, design, and implementation of optical, opto-electronic, or electrical subsystems and network elements for fixed or adaptive impairment mitigation, performance monitoring, add-drop multiplexing, and optical packet processing.

• Transmitter and receiver subsystems for direct detection and for coherent systems
• Multiplexing and demultiplexing subsystems
• Modulation and demodulation subsystems for single-carrier and multi-tone formats
• Optical and electronic signal processing and impairment mitigation subsystems
• Subsystems for the emulation and compensation of linear and nonlinear impairments
• Coherent detection subsystems and algorithms
• Clock and data recovery
• Analogue-to-digital and digital-to-analogue conversion
• Forward error correction (FEC) techniques
• Performance estimation and performance monitoring techniques
• Technology, design and performance of network nodes
• Subsystem aspects of reconfigurable add-drop multiplexers
• Optical regeneration and wavelength conversion subsystems
• Optical delays, optical buffering, bit-, and label-processing subsystems
• Chip-to-chip and optical backplane communication subsystems

4) Transmission Systems

This area focuses on the modelling, design, and implementation of optical fibre or free-space transmission links, highlighting system-level applications of subsystems and networking elements as well as system-level implications of physical impairments and impairment mitigation techniques. It further covers applications of quantum information technologies.

• WDM transmission system design, modelling, and experiments
• High-speed optical transmission systems
• High-spectral-efficiency optical transmission systems
• Free-space optical communication systems
• Impact of fibre non-linearity on transport system performance
• System aspects of static and dynamic polarization effects (PDL, PMD)
• Implications of modulation formats, subcarrier multiplexing, and OFDM on system performance
• Implications of coherent detection on system performance
• System implications of digital signal processing and forward error correction (FEC)
• Transmission aspects of WDM system upgrades and mixed bit rate systems
• System implications of optical and electronic fixed and adaptive impairment compensation schemes
• Transmission aspects in multimode fibre systems
• Quantum communication, quantum information, and quantum cryptography

5) Backbone and Core Networks

This area focuses on the modelling, design, architecture, and scaling of optical WDM and packet-based backbone and metro-core networks, including control and management functions and protocols as well as the application of optical communication technologies in core networks. It also covers aspects of successful commercial deployments and transport field trials.

• Optical backbone and metro-core networks: architecture, design, performance, control, and management
• Architectures of backbone and metro-core switches and routers
• Backbone network reliability and availability
• Protection and restoration
• Cross layer optimized network design
• IP-over-optical networks and architectures
• Optimization of converged optical network infrastructures
• Optical networking in the future Internet
• Optical packet/burst/flow switching networks
• Algorithms and protocols (e.g., routing, wavelength assignment, grooming)
• Architectures and solutions for content distribution applications (e.g., video)
• Support for end-to-end optical services across different network segments and width different QoS requirements
• Switching, protocols, and standards related topics for 100G and Terabit Ethernet
• Backbone and metro-core network demonstrations and field trials
• Interoperability demonstrations
• Optical networks integrating grid computing and storage services
• Energy efficiency and power consumption of optical networks
• Techno-economic comparison between different backbone and metro-core network architectures and technologies

6) Access Networks and LAN

This area focuses on networking aspects of broadband optical access and local-area networks. It covers FTTx, passive optical networks, radio-over-fibre systems, hybrid wireless/optical solutions, and in-building networks. It also comprises successful commercial mass deployments, field trials, and applications of optical communication technologies in public, private and enterprise networks.

• Optical access systems: architecture, design, performance, control, and management
• Optical access network experiments
• Optical access network demonstrations and field trials
• Local area networks (LANs) at 10G and beyond
• In-house optical networks
• High-speed optical interconnects for consumer electronics
• Rack-to-rack optical communications
• Optical networks for automotive applications
• Optics in storage area networks (SANs)
• Multimode and plastic optical fibre systems
• Optical Ethernet access networks
• Fibre to the X (FTTx)
• Passive optical networks (PONs)
• Hybrid wireless-optical access networks
• Microwave photonics
• Analogue optical systems
• Multiple access techniques (e.g., code-division multiple access (CDMA))
• Interoperability demonstrations
• Access system reliability, availability, and security
• Techno-economic comparison between different access network architectures and technologies

photo: Torino views - courtesy of Turismo Torino e Provincia