Optical Communications and Networking: Prospects in Industrial Applications

Dear Colleagues,

It is well-known that the photon follows Bose-Einstein statistics with negligible interactions between the particles, while the electron follows the Fermi-Dirac statistics with strong interactions between particles. Due to these intrinsic properties, it is much more simple and power-efficient to process information in the eletronic domain while transmiting the information in the optical domain; this is the infrastructure for today’s Internet. In the past two decades, the advancement of electronics processing circuits followed Moore’s law and significantly outpaced the advancement of optical systems. Thus, optical communication systems face a large challenge in transporting the ever-growing Internet traffic processed by electronic systems. Industry has explored multiple degrees of freedom of the photon (time, wavelength, amplitude, phase, polarization, and space) to transmit information. These applications range from short-reach chip-to-chip interconnections to te long-haul backbone communications at the trans-Pacific distance.

This Special Issue aims to explore the latest developments in the optical communication industry: From devices, to system, to network. It will focus on state-of-the-art advances and future perspectives in commerically deployed systems. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

• Coherent optical communication employing advanced modulation format.
• Pluggable optical modules for datacom and telecom applications.
• Photonics integrated circuit and on-board optics.
• Open optical line system (for example, transport infrastructure project).
• Packet optical integration, software defined networks and network function virtualization.
• Short-reach, direct-detection for data center interconnections.

Prof. Zhongqi Pan
Dr. Qiang Wang
Dr. Yang Yue
Dr. Hao Huang
Dr. Changjing Bao
Guest Editors

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