OFC 2023 showcases innovations in optical communications

The 2023 Optical Fiber Communications Conference and Exhibition (OFC) exhibition, taking place this week in San Diego, Ca., features demonstrations of the industry's most innovative new products and optical technologies driving advances in quantum networking, AI, and data center connectivity.

Hundreds of companies from 70 countries are using OFC as the platform to unveil their latest innovations (see a selection, below). The conference and exhibition is taking place through 9 March 2023 at the San Diego Convention Center.

"We expect the OFC 2023 in-person participation levels to rebound to pre-pandemic levels and look forward to seeing the exhibit hall full of attendees seeing exciting new products and industry initiative announcements and attending the many floor programs," commented OFC chairs Chris Cole (Coherent), Ramon Casellas (Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya), and Ming-Jun Li (Corning).

"Our live demonstrations and OFCnet platform are ideal for exhibitors to showcase emerging technologies and product interoperability."

OFC's business-focused event offers participants expert views of current market trends, new technologies and insight into the future of the industry. Market Watch, the Network Operator Summit, and the Data Center Summit will address the state of the industry, the latest application topics, with an "inside perspective from service providers and network operators and emerging technologies for data center connectivity".

Interoperability demonstrations

Industry organizations, including COBO, Ethernet Alliance, OIF and Open ROADM, are hosting discussions and live demonstrations on breakthrough technologies and industry interoperability efforts.

Technology areas to be showcased this year include 25 Gigabit Ethernet, 50GbE, 100GbE, 200GbE, 400GbE, and 800GbE, OpenROADM MSA compliant optical transport, 400ZR & 800LR optics, co-packaging architectures, common electrical I/O channels and Common Management Interface Specification.

OFCnet, OFC's high-speed optical network, will enable live demonstrations and showcase emerging technologies, including quantum networking, network element interoperability, SDN and programmability, and networking for big data/big science applications.

"OFCnet's connectivity will provide new opportunities for exhibitors who collaborate with affiliated academic institutions to highlight advancements and capabilities in a live, real-time, fully operational network environment," said Marc Lyonnais, Director of External Research at Ciena and OFCnet Chair.

Selected OFC launches

• NEL-A, Fujitsu, NEC, Ribbon, and UT-Dallas co-create OpenLab@UT-Dallas dedicated to Open ROADM interoperability validation
• Coherent holds industry-first live demonstration of 200G PAM4 Mach-Zehnder modulated laser technology
• OFS develops multicore fibers for its submarine fiber portfolio
• Go!Foton announces collaboration with Molex
• Hyper Photonix builds new gigafactory for volume deployment of 400G, 800G, and faster optics
• Santec's 3-in-1 optical component analysis system delivers OFDR, WDL and proximity sensing
• Ranovus demonstrates industry's lowest power consumption 800G Ethernet-interoperable link to scale AMD adaptive SoCs for AI/ML
• DenseLight Semiconductors launches first product in a series of high-power SOAs, customizable for Silicon Photonics
• Casela Technologies demonstrates high-power external laser source module supporting OIF-ELSFP agreement
• Furukawa Electric develops electro-absorption modulated laser with integrated SOA
• Scintil Photonics demonstrates first single-chip 100 GHz DFB comb laser source