OFC 2020 Celebrates 50 Years of Light-Speed Connections

The Optical Networking and Communication Conference & Exhibition (OFC 2020), to be held at the San Diego Convention Center March 8-12, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first viable optical fiber. The world’s largest conference on optical communications enters its 42nd year and will feature more than 700 companies, nearly 200 invited speakers, more than 50 courses, renowned plenary speakers, and plenty of special events and presentations.

Attendees of OFC 2020 will be able to browse exhibits from more than 700 companies. Courtesy of OSA.

David Payne, director of the Optoelectronics Research Center at the University of Southampton; Qi Bi, CTO of the China Telecom Research Institute; and Karsten Danzmann, director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, will deliver plenary talks. Their talks will cover the future of silica as a pillar of telecommunications technology, the development and realization of 5G wireless networks, and new horizons in gravitational wave astrophysics.

To mark the anniversary of the optical fiber, OFC will hold a celebration titled “Celebrating 50 Years of Light-Speed Connections.” The celebration will feature a dedicated keynote address, a show-floor exhibit on the history of fiber optics, and a reception. The exhibit will allow visitors to explore the timeline of milestone innovations, from the first low-loss fiber in 1970 to efficient 400 gigabit Ethernet transport today.

Also on the show floor will be multivendor interoperability demonstrations of the products and inventions enabling next-generation infrastructure. Technologies featured will include 400ZR, 400G OpenZR+, Open ROADM, Common Electrical I/O (CEI)-112G, FlexE, IC-TROSA, 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE), 25 GbE, 50 GbE, 100 GbE, 200 GbE, and 400 GbE, and 400 G on-board optical modules. Demonstrations will be held throughout the exhibit floor with approximately five demo booths.

Visitors at OFC 2019 chat while browsing the exhibition hall. Courtesy of OSA.

David Welch, founder and chief innovation officer of Infinera Corp., will present a special keynote on March 10 to look back at the last 50 years of discovery in optical fiber technology and its impact on society. His talk will also include a brief glimpse into the near future to see how fiber optics will continue to extend and enhance light-speed connections. The keynote will be followed by a themed reception.

Four symposia are planned. On March 9, the first will be “Quantum Information Science and Technology in the Context of Optical Communications,” followed later in the day by “The Role of Machine Learning for the Next-generation of Optical Communication Systems and Networks.” A symposium on March 10 is titled “Emerging Network Architectures for 5G Edge Cloud,” and on March 11, “Future Photonics Devices fj/bit Optical Networks Enabled by Emerging Optical Technologies.”