OFC 2017: A Broad Global Optics Assembly

From March 19 to 23, the Los Angeles Convention Center in California will be filled with the industry’s top optical communications professionals, companies and institutions. They’re coming together for OFC (the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition), the largest global conference and exhibition for optical communications.

The thousands of annual attendees — more than 13,000 in 2016 — range from students, educators and technicians to service providers, engineers and executive management. For more than 40 years, they have hailed from many areas, including device and network manufacturing companies, fiber and cable suppliers, academia, investment and venture capital firms, enterprise, and government agencies.

The latest technologies and products in optical communications will be highlighted at OFC. These include:

• Devices and fibers for high-speed data center links
• Optical transport systems and components
• Optical wireless and visible light communications
• Silicon and integrated photonics for datacom and telecom
• Network architectures and applications enabled by SDN (Software Defined Networking) and NFV (Network Functions Virtualization)
• Open hardware and software platforms for cloud scale networks
• Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality

OFC features an extensive technical program, as well. Panel discussions, plenary sessions, short courses, workshops, tutorials and symposia cover all facets of the optics field, while peer-reviewed presentations bring key topic areas to the forefront.

Plenary speakers this year are Urs Hölzle, senior VP for technical infrastructure at Google Inc., who will present A Ubiquitous Cloud Requires a Transparent Network; Meint K. Smit, a professor at Eindhoven University of Technology, who will discuss Photonics Integrated Circuits for All: How Foundries are Transforming the Prototyping of Exciting New Devices; and Mischa Dohler, a professor at King’s College London, who will focus on the Internet of Skills: Where Communications, Robotics and AI Meet.

Other hot and emerging topics will be featured, too, via several summit programs; specifically, the OFC Network Operator Summit. This will explore current needs and future requirements of service providers and network operators as they invest in expansion plans, and how all of it may impact the future of the industry.

A Data Center Summit will showcase the benefits of SDN and NFV through a technical presentation and a live demonstration. The technical presentation will provide an overview of open hardware and software platforms for designing, deploying and operating large-scale networks and complex commercial networking environments. The live demonstration — SDN & NFV Demo Zone — offers attendees the opportunity to see a prototype of collaborative research projects, pre-commercial products and proof-of-concept networks in the SDN and NFV space.

OFC will present current market trends and future projections during the Market Watch — a series of panel discussions that focus on the latest application topics and business issues in the optical communications field. This will also feature presentations and sessions with guest speakers from industry, research and the investment community.

The OFC exhibition, which runs from March 21 to 23, will host hundreds of exhibits from companies in all fields, and from all corners of the globe. Among them are Ciena, Coriant, Corning Inc., Cisco Systems, Fujitsu Optical Components, Global Communication Semiconductors Inc., Huawei Technologies, Nokia, Juniper Networks, Broadcom, Intel, Lumentum, Mellanox and Oclaro. Technologies such as active optical devices and photonic integrated circuits, advances in deployable optical components, fibers and field installation equipment, digital and electronic subsystems, fiber and propagation physics, fiber optic and waveguide devices and sensors, radio-over-fiber, free-space and non-telecom systems, and more will also be on display.

For more information about OFC, visit www.ofcconference.org.