Advances in UWB optical fibre communications: potential, challenges, solutions. 18-19 May 2023

Ming-Jun Li, Corning Incorporated Corning, USA.
Designs and Physical Characteristics of Optical Fibers for Ultra-wideband Transmission Systems

Bio:
Dr. Ming-Jun Li joined Corning in 1991 and is currently a Corporate Fellow. He has contributed to many single mode and multimode fiber products for optical communications and specialty fibers for different applications. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of Optica and IEEE. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2022. He received the 2023 John Tyndall Award. He has served as Associate Editor and Coordinating Committee Member, and currently is Deputy Editor for Journal of Lightwave Technology.  He has also served as a guest editor for several special issues and as committee chair or member for many international conferences.  He holds over 260 U.S. patents and has published 7 book chapters and authored over 350 technical papers.

David Neilson, Nokia Bell Labs, USA
Challenges and opportunities for ultrabroadband fiber transmission

Bio:
Dr. David T. Neilson is the Group Leader for Optical Transmission Research and a Network Architecture Lab Principal at Nokia Bell Labs, in NJ USA. He is also a Bell Labs Fellow. The departments in the group conduct research into optical systems for terrestrial and undersea, including ultra-high baud rates, modulation formats and coding and the use of space division multiplexing, for scaling system capacities. He joined Bell-Labs in 1998, where he has lead research on optical switching systems and on opto-electronic integration. This includes MEMS and LCoS for wavelength selective switches and optical cross-connects; InP and Silicon photonics.
He received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, U.K., in 1990 and 1993, respectively. From 1993 to 1996, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher working on free-space optical interconnect and switching systems with Heriot-Watt. From 1996 to 1998, he was a Visiting Scientist with NEC Research, Princeton, NJ, researching optical interconnects for high-performance computing systems. He has authored more than 200 publications, patents, and short courses, on both devices and systems in the field of optical interconnects and switching. He has served on and chaired several IEEE-LEOS, OSA, and SPIE conference programs in the field of optical interconnects and switching.

Juan Diego Ania Castañon, CSIC, Spain
Femtosecond pulsed ultralong fiber ring laser sources

Bio:
Juan Diego Ania-Castañón is the Director of the Spanish National Research Council’s (CSIC) Institute of Optics and the coordinator of its Nanoscale and Nonlinear Guided Optics group. Most of his career has been focused on the field of nonlinear fibre optics, working at the interface between the theoretical and the experimental. He obtained his PhD in theoretical physics in 2000 from Instituto de Estructura de la Materia (CSIC) and Universidad de Oviedo (Spain). In 2001 he joined the Photonics Research Group at Aston University in the UK, where he worked on different aspects of Raman fibre amplification, proposing the concept of ultra-long Raman fibre lasers in 2004. After being awarded both a British EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship and a Spanish Ramón y Cajal Fellowship, he eventually moved to a permanent position at Instituto de Óptica (CSIC) in Madrid in 2007, establishing the Nonlinear Dynamics and Fibre Optics group (currently the Nanoscale and Nonlinear Guided Optics group) with other like-minded colleagues, where he continued his work on nonlinear fibre optics, with an emphasis on fibre lasers and their applications in telecommunications and sensing. He served for four years as Deputy Director of the institute, and was later appointed its Director in 2016. He has also served as Director for CSIC’s joint Centre of Physics between 2018 and 2020, and is the co-founder of FOCUS S.L. (now part of APL Photonics), a company dedicated to optical fibre sensing. He is the author or co-author of more than 200 articles and conference papers and holds multiple patents in the field of fiber lasers and amplifiers.

Md Asif Iqbal, British Telecom, UK
Exploring the Potential of Hollow Core Fibre For Telecom Operators

Bio:
Pro-active and result oriented optical research engineer with a comprehensive background in fibre-optic transmission systems which led to multiple publications in highly reputed international conferences and top-ranked journals. My expertise is on advanced fibre-optic transmission systems, particularly on high capacity optical transmission systems, long-haul coherent transmission, ultrawide-band Raman amplification and transmission impairments mitigation.

Matheus Sena, Deutsche Telecom, Germany.
Rx-based DSP for multiband link tomography

Bio:
Matheus Sena works as research and development (R&D) architect at Deutsche Telekom since August 2022. Prior to joining Deutsche Telekom, Matheus was a Research Associate at Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) in Berlin, where he worked on the Wideband Optical Networks (WON) project and developed intelligent Digital Signal Processing (DSP) algorithms for optical wideband systems. He is the process of concluding his PhD at the Technical University of Berlin (TUB), where has been studying and researching extensively in the field of optical communication systems.

Caio Santos, Fraunhofer HHI, Germany
Automated Dataset Generation and Advances towards Non-Conventional Bands

Bio:
Caio Marciano Santos received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from the Federal University of Espírito Santo, Vitória, Brazil, in 2017 and 2019, respectively. From 2016 to 2021 he worked with the Laboratory of Telecommunications (LabTel) in Vitória, Brazil, with prototyping, assembling and testing of optical systems and devices. Since September 2021, he has been a Research Associate with the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institute, Berlin, Germany. His research interests include multiband transmission systems and dataset generation in coherent optical communication systems for application in data-aided techniques and digital signal processing.

Yiwei Xie, Zhejiang University, China
High-performance programmable silicon photonic devices for optical communication

Bio:
Yiwei Xie received the Ph.D. degree in optical engineering from Monash University, Australia. After graduation, she worked as a research assistant in Sydney University, and then joined Zhejiang University as an associated professor. Her research interests are integrated optics, optical communication and microwave photonics. She has published more than 30 publications and has attended several international conferences. She was awarded the outstanding self-financed abroad students award by Chinese government in 2019, and science & technology award for young talents by Zhejiang association of science and technology in 2023.

Prof. Jayanta Sahu, Southampton ORC, UK.
Advances in Doped Fibre Amplifiers for Wideband Optical Communication Systems

Bio:
Prof. Jayanta K. Sahu is a Professor at the ORC, University of Southampton, UK. He received both his Master degree (M.Sc.) in Physics and Ph.D. from the India Institute of Technology, India. He has extensive experience in optical fibre technology. In 2000, he joined the ORC, and his current research interests include optical materials, optical fibre design, development of novel silica based fibre structures, and cladding-pumped rare-earth doped fibre lasers and amplifiers. In the course of his research career, he has published over 200 articles in scientific journals and conferences including several invited talks. Prof. Sahu presently leads the silica fibre fabrication group at ORC, and responsible for the development of most of the specialty optical fibres used in the research of fibre lasers and amplifiers at the ORC.

Nicolas Fontaine, Nokia Bell Labs, USA.
Next Steps for Space Division Multiplexing

Bio:
Nicolas Fontaine obtained his PhD in 2010 at the University of California, Davis in the Next Generation Network Systems Laboratory in Electrical Engineering. In his dissertation he studied how to generate and measure the amplitude and phase of broadband optical waveforms in many narrowband spectral slices. Since June 2011, he has been a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories at Crawford Hill, NJ in the advanced photonics division. At Bell Labs, he develops devices for space-division multiplexing in multi-core and few mode fibers, builds wavelength crossconnects and filtering devices, and investigates spectral slice coherent receivers for THz bandwidth waveform measurement.

Shuangyi Yan, Bristol University, UK.
Towards deployment of machine learning in Optical Networks

Bio:
Dr. Shuangyi Yan is a Senior Lecturer in the High Performance Networks group at the Smart Internet Lab, University of Bristol. He received his B.E degree from Tianjin University, China in 2004, and his PhD degree in optical engineering from the Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, CAS, China in 2009. Dr. Yan has extensive experience in the field of optical transmission and optical networking and has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University from 2011 to 2013. Dr. Yan joined the High Performance Networks Group at the University of Bristol in July 2013 and has since focused his research on machine-learning-enabled future networks, such as dynamic optical networks and 5G Beyond networks, multidimensional optical networks, and data centre networks. He has authored or co-authored over 90 refereed publications, including several post-deadline papers and invited talks at top-level conferences. Dr. Yan is also an active member of the technical community and has served as a Technical Program Committee member and Co-Chair in several conferences, such as EuCNC, ONDM, OECC, and ACP.

Lidia Galdino, Corning, UK.
Advances in Optical Fiber for Subsea Systems

Bio:
Lidia Galdino is a System Engineering Manager at Corning, responsible for defining and driving long-haul terrestrial and submarine optical fiber and cable product strategy. She received a Ph.D. from University of Campinas. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Lightwave Technology, and serves on several technical program committees, including OFC and ECOC. She has authored > 100 peer-reviewed papers on optical fiber communication systems.

Anastasia Vasylchenkova, UCL, UK.
Communication system design and analysis with analytical models for quality of transmission

Bio:
Anastasiia Vasylchenkova is currently a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow in Optical Networks Group at University College London, running a research project on the analytical modelling of ultrawideband optical communication. She received her BSc and MSc in nuclear physics from the Kharkiv National University, Ukraine in 2014 and 2016, respectively.
She received a PhD degree from Aston University, Birmingham, UK, for her research within the nonlinear Fourier transform approach for optical communications. Her research interests include fibre optics, nonlinearity mitigation, analytical modelling and transmission system design.
Anastasiia is an experienced educator in STEM, educational events manager and designer, Fellow of the Higher Educational Academy. She is holding the role of a President of the International Physicists’ Tournament, acting also as a juror and organiser. Beyond this, she has 10 years of volunteering experience for STEM and photonics communities, including engagement through SPIE, IEEE, and OSA.

Georg Rademacher, Institute of electrical and optical communications, University of Stuttgart, Germany.
High-capacity transmission using space division multiplexing and multiple transmission bands

Bio:
Georg Rademacher received the Dipl.-Ing and Dr.-Ing degrees from Technische Universitaet Berlin in 2011 and 2015, respectively. From 2016 to 2023, he was a senior researcher at NICT. Since 2023, Georg Rademacher is a professor of integrated photonic systems and the director of the institute of electrical and optical communications at the University of Stuttgart. His research focuses on systems and subsystems for high-capacity optical fiber transmission systems. He authored and co-authored more than 200 papers, published at international conferences and journals. He has received the 2017 ITG award, the best paper award at the 2018 Photonics in Switching and Computing (PSC) conference, the 2020 Maejima Hisoka award from the Tsushinbunka association and the 2021 NICT outstanding performance award. Prof. Rademacher is a senior member of the IEEE photonics society and a member of the VDE.

Gabriele di Rosa, ADVA, Germany.
Upgrade strategies and Sustainable Terminals Scaling for Multi-Band Optical Networks

Bio:

Gabriele received his M.Sc. in 2019 in Electronic Engineering at Politecnico di Torino, Italy and in Electrical Engineering at KTH, Sweden in the frame of a double degree project between two universities. Gabriele’s master thesis was focused on the impact of transmitter distortion on coherent optical network and was carried out at KTH in partnership with Finisar AB, where he continued the work for a short period of time before moving to VPIphotonics in Berlin to participate in the WON project. In 2022 he joined the Advanced Technology team in ADVA (now Adtran Holdings) where he works as a Senior Engineer in the field of transceiver technologies and digital signal processing.

Dr. Antonio Napoli, Infinera, Germany.
TBC

Bio:
Antonio Napoli holds a Ph.D. from the Politecnico di Torino. He was with Siemens, NSN, and Coriant in 2006, 2007, 2013, respectively. Since 2018, he has been with Infinera, where he is leading advance research topics with particular focus on DSP, wideband, machine learning, and coherent point-to-multipoint optical networks. He served as an OFC TPC member (2017-2019). He has been three times guest editor for JOCN and JLT. He is the technical coordinator of 3 Marie Curie H2020 projects. He is the principal investigator for Infinera in three EU funded projects: B5G-OPEN, ALLEGRO, and SEASON. His research interests include DSP, wideband optical systems, transmission modeling, and ML/AI for optics. Dr. Napoli co-authored 7 patents, 250+ peer-to-peer reviewed articles, and one book chapter.

Dr. Yuta Wakayama, KDDI Research, Inc., Fujimino, Japan.
High-capacity O-band transmission using a bismuth-doped fibre amplifier

Bio:
Yuta Wakayama is a Senior Manager/Head of Photonic Transport Network Laboratory in KDDI Resarch, Inc. He studied holography and received his Ph.D. degree in information science and technology from Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, in 2013. After graduation, he joined KDDI Corporation, Tokyo, Japan, and worked at the Global Network Operation Center. Since 2014, he has been with KDDI R&D Laboratories (currently KDDI Research) Inc., Fujimino, Japan. His research interests are mostly related to space-division multiplexing (SDM) and submarine cable systems. He worked on characterisation methods based on digital holography for SDM fibres, and also worked on SDM devices, such as fibre amplifiers and mode multiplexers. He contributed to the first experiment on 10-Pb/s SDM fibre transmission in 2017. In 2018, he has stayed as a honorary research associate at the Optical Networks Group (ONG), led by Prof Polina Bayvel, University College London (UCL), and studied extreme high-order modulation and ultrawideband (UWB) transmission with Dr Lidia Galdino. Dr Wakayama has been a recipient of many awards, highlights include one of top awards in Japan, Maejima Hisoka Award, in April 2022.

Dr. Donald Govan, Lumentum, UK
Pluggable Coherent Modules for 400Gb/s and beyond

Bio:
Dr. Donald Govan completed his Ph.D. at Aston University in 1999. From 2000 to 2003, he worked for Marconi Solstis. Following that he held Postdoctoral positions with Nottingham University and Swansea University. In 2010, he joined Oclaro Technology Ltd (now Lumentum) in Paignton as a Systems Architect. He is the author of more than 30 journal and conference papers. He currently works in coherent module and component development focussing on the line side system performance.