Optical Networks and Systems

Scope and Motivation

Optical/photonic technology is a well-established field of research and development. Photonic technologies are widely employed in access, metropolitan, backbone, storage, grid and interconnection networks, and the success of optical technology is a major evidence.

Transmission systems have benefited by the introduction of advanced dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM), especially in long-distance wide-area domain, while coarse WDM (CWDM) technologies are widely deployed in the metro/regional and edge networks.

In the backbone, the main goal is to provide network services with very high reliability and availability. This goal is achieved using efficient and reliable network design and employing effective protection and restoration techniques. In the Metro arena, traffic grooming in SONET/SDH has been recently appointed as a key enabler to improve network utilization. The definition of a control plane that embeds integrated (optical and electronic) control and management policies/strategies is envisioned as a major research field in the near future.

In the access area, a significant interest is devoted to provision reliable WDM passive optical network (PON) architectures, pushing fibre access to the end-users.

Photonic technologies are also considered as key elements in data centre deployments, such as high performance packet switches and low-latency interconnection infrastructure. The possible applications of photonics in switching range from the implementation of optical switching fabrics to high performance board-to-board and chip-to-chip interconnections, up to the most innovative all-optical switch implementation. The use of photonics in switching devices requires the design of innovative switching architectures.

This symposium seeks to highlight the most recent paradigms to exploit optical technologies in communication networks. Several types of contributions are welcome, including research papers, standardization efforts, position papers, and field trial experiments. Some of the key focus areas include, but are not necessarily limited to:

Main topics of interest

1. Data storage networks
2. Demonstrations, experiments, field trials and test beds in optical networks
3. Dynamic traffic management in optical networks
4. Energy efficiency in optical networks
5. Free space optical networks
6. Grid networks
7. GMPLS
8. Hybrid electro-optical switch architectures
9. Impact of the physical-layer impairments on optical network design and traffic engineering
10. Metropolitan and regional networks
11. Measurements and monitoring in optical networks
12. Multi-domain optical communications
13. Multi-granularity switching
14. Multicasting in optical networks
15. New service paradigms in optical networks
16. Optical access network architectures: PON, APON, BPON, GPON, EPON, WDM-PON
17. Optical Burst Switching (OBS)
18. Optical Packet Switching (OPS)
19. Optical interconnects
20. Optical switch architectures and performance
21. Optical network security
22. Photonics in switching
23. Routing and wavelength assignment
24. Single layer and multi-layer protection and restoration
25. Signalling and monitoring in optical networks
26. Standardization issues in optical networks
27. Traffic grooming and traffic engineering
28. Traffic engineering