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Photonics
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Next-Generation Optical Networks Communication
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Next-Generation Optical Networks Communication

A special issue of Photonics (ISSN 2304-6732). This special issue belongs to the section "Optical Communication and Network".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 2337

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Yuyang Gao

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Computer and Communication Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China
Interests: optical fiber communication; optoelectronic devices

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Since the invention of optical fiber in 1966, research and applications of optical fiber communication and networks have never ceased. Currently, optical fiber networks have penetrated every corner of the globe. With the rapid development of technologies such as 6G, artificial intelligence (AI), etc., the demand for optical fiber communication and network bandwidth has increased. New principles and technologies continue to emerge, making exploring next-generation optical fiber communication networks necessary. Anti-resonant hollow-core fibers have continuously pushed the limits of transmission loss reduction and have now entered the deployment phase of hollow-core fiber optic cables, serving as a new medium for future ultra-low latency, ultra-large capacity optical transmission. Multi-core fibers directly interfacing with 800G silicon photonic modules can quadruple single-fiber capacity without requiring FIFO buffers. Breakthrough advancements have also been achieved in 1.6T optical modules with co-packaged optics (CPO), reducing power consumption. In optical switching networks, the emergence of large-port optical switches has significantly reduced the network power consumption of AI data centers, etc. The optical fiber communication research scope is vast, containing fiber and cable technologies, active and passive guided-wave components, integrated optics and optoelectronics, systems and subsystems, networks, and switching. Scenarios combined with AI are also included.

We encourage researchers to publish high-quality papers in Next-Generation Optical Networks Communication. In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Hollow-core fibers and space division multiplexing fibers;
  • Active and passive optoelectronic devices;
  • Ultra-high-speed fiber-optic communication system and subsystems;
  • Advanced digital signal processing techniques;
  • Novel optical networks architecture;
  • Optical fiber communication with AI.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Yuyang Gao
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Photonics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • optical fiber
  • optoelectronic devices
  • systems and subsystems
  • networks

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 1786 KB  
Article
Integrating High-Capacity Self-Homodyne Transmission and High-Sensitivity Dual-Pulse ϕ-OTDR with an EO Comb over a 7-Core Fiber
by Xu Liu, Chenbo Zhang, Yi Zou, Zhangyuan Chen, Weiwei Hu, Xiangge He and Xiaopeng Xie
Photonics 2026, 13(3), 261; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics13030261 - 9 Mar 2026
Viewed by 473
Abstract
Beyond supporting ultra-high-capacity data transmission, metropolitan and access networks are expected to enable real-time infrastructure monitoring, driving the emergence of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC). Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) has proven to be well-suited to urban sensing application requirements, yet its seamless integration [...] Read more.
Beyond supporting ultra-high-capacity data transmission, metropolitan and access networks are expected to enable real-time infrastructure monitoring, driving the emergence of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC). Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) has proven to be well-suited to urban sensing application requirements, yet its seamless integration into ISAC remains challenging—conventional high-peak-power sensing pulses in DAS induce nonlinear crosstalk in communication channels. DAS inherently suffers from interference fading due to single-frequency laser sources, which limits sensitivity. Here, we propose an ISAC architecture based on an electro-optic (EO) comb and a 7-core fiber, achieving nonlinearity-suppressed self-homodyne transmission and fading-suppressed DAS. Unmodulated comb lines and sensing pulses are polarization-multiplexed into orthogonal polarization states within the central core to minimize nonlinear crosstalk while delivering local oscillators (LOs) for wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) coherent transmission within six outer cores—achieving 10.56 Tbit/s capacity. In addition to supporting WDM transmission, the EO comb’s wavelength diversity is also exploited to enhance DAS performance. Specifically, a dual-pulse probe loaded onto four comb lines yields a 6 dB signal-to-noise ratio gain and a 64% reduction in fading occurrences, achieving a sensitivity of 1.72 pε/Hz with 8 m spatial resolution. Moreover, our system supports simultaneous multi-wavelength backscatter detection in sensing and simplified digital signal processing in self-homodyne communication, reducing receiver complexity and cost. Our work presents a scalable, energy-efficient ISAC framework that unifies high-capacity communication with high-sensitivity sensing, providing a blueprint for future intelligent optical networks. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Next-Generation Optical Networks Communication)
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16 pages, 3263 KB  
Article
Demonstration of Real-Time 4 × 89 km Core-Division-Multiplexed Transmission Using Weakly Coupled Seven-Core Fiber and C+L-Band 1.2 Tb/s OTN Transponders with Configurable Baud Rate
by Jian Cui, Yu Deng, Zhuo Liu, Yuxiao Wang, Yating Zhang, Chao Wu, Zilin Fan, Junyi Zhou, Bin Hao, Leimin Zhang, Bin Wu, Yong Chen, Shang Cao, Shenghui Hu, Haibin Liu, Lei Shen, Jie Luo, Cheng Chang, Yan Sun, Qi Wan, Bing Yan and Ninglun Guadd Show full author list remove Hide full author list
Photonics 2026, 13(1), 52; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics13010052 - 6 Jan 2026
Viewed by 432
Abstract
The explosive growth of optical interconnection service traffic urgently necessitates the evolution of optical transponders and fibers. The core-division-multiplexed (CDM) transmission technique using weakly coupled multi-core fibers (MCFs) and beyond-1T optical transport network (OTN) transponders has emerged as an attractive solution to meet [...] Read more.
The explosive growth of optical interconnection service traffic urgently necessitates the evolution of optical transponders and fibers. The core-division-multiplexed (CDM) transmission technique using weakly coupled multi-core fibers (MCFs) and beyond-1T optical transport network (OTN) transponders has emerged as an attractive solution to meet the bandwidth demands of future networks. In this paper, we demonstrate an ultra-high-speed OTN system using C+L-band 1.2 Tb/s OTN transponders with a weakly coupled seven-core fiber. The OTN transponders support two configurable modulation rates of 135 Gbaud and 155 Gbaud, along with a probability constellation-shaping 64-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (PCS-64QAM) format. The MCF exhibits characteristics comparable to those of SMFs and negligible inter-core crosstalk, providing a superior physical channel for ultra-high-speed CDM transmission. Fiber length and low-noise EDFAs are also chosen to enhance the transmission distance under the limited optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) budget when using 1.2 Tb/s OTN transponders. Benefiting from the high-performance OTN transponders and MCF, we achieve real-time 0.672 Pb/s and 0.571 Pb/s 4 × 89 km CDM transmissions using 135 Gbaud and 155 Gbaud modulation rates, respectively. The performance of the two modulation configurations is also compared and discussed. This work demonstrates the feasibility of implementing 1.2 Tb/s OTN transponders with weakly coupled MCFs to achieve ultra-high-speed metro–regional transmission, presenting a promising solution for next-generation inter-city data center interconnections. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Next-Generation Optical Networks Communication)
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17 pages, 8874 KB  
Article
Adaptive DBP System with Long-Term Memory for Low-Complexity and High-Robustness Fiber Nonlinearity Mitigation
by Mingqing Zuo, Huitong Yang, Yi Liu, Zhengyang Xie, Dong Wang, Shan Cao, Zheng Zheng and Han Li
Photonics 2025, 12(7), 704; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics12070704 - 11 Jul 2025
Viewed by 993
Abstract
Adaptive digital back-propagation (A-DBP) is a promising candidate for mitigating Kerr nonlinearity due to its ability to estimate the optimal nonlinear scaling factor adaptively. However, the adaptive process relying on the gradient-dependent algorithm is prone to fluctuation, leading to extra iterations or even [...] Read more.
Adaptive digital back-propagation (A-DBP) is a promising candidate for mitigating Kerr nonlinearity due to its ability to estimate the optimal nonlinear scaling factor adaptively. However, the adaptive process relying on the gradient-dependent algorithm is prone to fluctuation, leading to extra iterations or even divergence and resulting in huge computational efforts in A-DBP. In this paper, an improved A-DBP algorithm with long-term memory (LTM) is proposed, employing root mean square propagation (RMSProp) to achieve low-complexity and high-robustness compensation performances. The A-DBP-LTM algorithm based on RMSProp was numerically validated through the simulated transmission of 69 Gbaud DP-16QAM over 2000 km and further verified through an experiment involving 26-λ 63 Gbaud DP-16QAM transmission over 1200 km. Compared with conventional digital back-propagation and A-DBP based on a gradient-descent algorithm, our proposed method allows substantial complexity reductions of 31.35% and 58.47%, respectively. Furthermore, high robustness in only a few iterations and a 0.33 dB improvement in the optical signal–noise ratio penalty were also experimentally demonstrated. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Next-Generation Optical Networks Communication)
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