GAIL OVERTON
In 2005, the debut of the combined Optical Fiber Communication Conference & Exhibition (OFC) and the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (NFOEC), the newly named OFC/NFOEC conference featured more than 750 presentations focused on optical communications, with fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) at the top of the list. Managed by the Optical Society of America (OSA; Washington, D.C.) and billed as the largest international optical communications conference in the world (40% of its 2005 exhibitors were from outside the United States), attendance at OFC/NFOEC 2006 will no doubt continue to be viewed as "necessary" for technical and marketing experts in the field of optical communications.
The conference is once again being held in Anaheim, CA, from March 5 to 10, with the exhibit floor--already filled with more than 400 exhibitors as of mid-November--open March 7 to 9.
'Firsts' in 2006
For the first time in 2006, the Service Provider Summit and Market Watch are open to all conference and exhibit attendees. "This will allow exhibit-only attendees to receive educational content and get the full exhibit floor experience," says Elizabeth Rogan, OSA executive director. The Summit offers topics and speakers of interest to CTOs, network architects, network designers and technologists within the service provider and carrier sector and includes panel discussions and keynote presentations. Market Watch is a three-day series of panel sessions that engage the applications and business communities in the field of optical communications. Both the Service Provider Summit and Market Watch will be held on the exhibit floor.
FTTX takes hold
In 2006, fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP), fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), and a host of other fiber architectures--encompassed in the term FTTX--continue to be important conference subjects (see Fig. 1). The technical session conference tracks are divided into two sections: OFC papers are dedicated to the "research and development" of optical fiber and communications technologies, while NFOEC papers are concerned with the "engineering and implementation" of optical fiber and communications networks. A subtle difference, but important in deciding which conference tracks are more applicable to attendees depending on the lifecycle stage of the products or technologies they are working on. For example, most of the FTTX engineering papers are taking place in the NFOEC technical sessions, whereas new FTTX technologies such as wavelength-division-multiplexing passive optical networks (WDM PONs) are being presented in the OFC technical sessions.
The FTTX-related presentations include a panel session in the Wednesday Service Provider Summit entitled "Update on FTTX around the Globe." Although bringing fiber closer to the home is now viewed as "mandatory" for any successful broadband strategy, different architectures are being deployed. In the Summit, Verizon (USA), NTT Labs (Japan), and SBC (USA) discuss the tradeoffs of bringing fiber directly to the home (FTTH/FTTP), or terminating it at the cabinet or node (FTTC/FTTN) with services dropped to the customer through high-speed copper links. "The capital expenditure to deploy FTTH has dropped significantly and is now comparable to the cost of copper-based infrastructure in Greenfield applications--new housing developments where the communications infrastructure is built from scratch," said Chris Pfistner, chair of the Service Provider Summit and director of Global Access Business at NeoPhotonics (San Jose, CA). The main reason is a drastic cost reduction in optical components enabled through new technologies such as planar lightwave circuits.
In addition to FTTX, developments in Ethernet access and WDM continue to be popular subjects for the NFOEC technical sessions, which are organized by two subcommittees, focusing on Network Systems and on Network Technologies. "The increasing focus on delivering services over Ethernet indicates that the interest has gone beyond the technology to the business issue of earning revenue," said Rolf Frantz, NFOEC program chair. "The interest in WDM/DWDM seems to stem from actual deployments--experience that may help better define the needs for the next generation of components and equipment."
Optical fiber still evolving
Although it has been more than 20 years since the first low-cost optical fiber was manufactured for communications, optical fiber designs continue to evolve to meet new communications and non-communications applications. For example, microstructured or air-core "holey" photonic-crystal fibers (PCFs) continue to grow in popularity for a variety of applications. "This year PCF has been elevated from testing of the fiber itself into using the fiber for multi-wavelength data transmission and for applications including supercontinuum light sources, sensors, dispersion compensators, and wavelength converters," said Joseph Ford, OFC program cochair and associate professor at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD; La Jolla, CA). "This represents a major step toward deploying PCF for real-world applications" (see Fig. 2). Ford points out that in addition to PCF developments, the use of nonlinear optical-fiber effects (parametric processes) for lasers, amplifiers, and wavelength converters is increasing.
The OFC technical conference track, concerned primarily with optical fiber and communications R&D, is divided into nine categories from A through I: fibers and optical propagation effects, amplifiers and lasers, signal measurement and distortion-compensation, switching/filtering/routing devices, optoelectronic devices, digital transmission systems, subsystems and analog systems, networks, and emerging applications, respectively.
Loudon Blair, OFC program cochair and senior director of network architecture at Ciena (Linthicum, MD), notes that, in addition to new fiber technologies, Optical Access Solutions in category I and Optical Packet Switching/Optical Burst Switching in category H are important OFC technical conference topics this year--these two topical areas received a little more than 10% of all OFC paper submissions. "It is clear to me, from the quantity and the quality of research papers that we are receiving, that the optical networking industry is alive and kicking," says Blair.
Included with the price of full technical conference registration are the Workshop sessions--interactive discussions that usually follow a short presentation, providing an opportunity for attendees to engage in the exchange of provocative opinion concerning the newest technologies. This year, the OFC workshops include debates on conventional versus microstructured optical fibers, fiber versus waveguide amplifiers, wavelength-switching versus tunable-filter ROADMs, and the debate over which is the better "X" in XPONs.
Cautious optimism
The uncertainty brought about by the telecommunications bubble is driving the business-related emphasis at the OFC/NFOEC conference. The Final Market Watch presentation, "State of the Industry: A Wall Street/Investor Perspective," on Thursday, March 9, attempts to shed light on the current and future state of the optical communications industry. "After years of decline, telco capex spending is predicted to approach double-digit year-over-year growth in 2005, with spending into 2006 focused on broadband access/FTTX, wireless, and carrier-grade Ethernet initiatives," notes the descriptive text for this session. If the Market Watch speakers from Merrill Lynch (New York, NY), U.S. Venture Partners (Menlo Park, CA), and Morgan Keegan & Co. (Memphis, TN) support this claim, don't be surprised if you hear loud applause (and possibly cheers and shouts) on the exhibit hall floor.