Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC), the world’s leading conference and exhibition for optical communications and networking professionals, returned “live” to San Diego in 2022 after a going virtual due to COVID-19. This premiere industry event hosted approximately 8,000 participants and 430 exhibiting companies. The conference, trade show, and OFC Live programming produced high quality interaction among communities onsite, virtually, and through social media. From critical optical components to data center applications to 5G access networks, the event highlighted the dynamic fiber optic ecosystem that powers today’s digital economy (OFC Cconference, 2022).
Global optical communications leaders united to exchange information and demonstrate ground-breaking interoperability through the OpenROADM MSA Demo, catapulting optical technologies and network advancements into the reality of tomorrow. This interoperability between 3 ROADM vendors and 6 transponder/muxponder/switchsponder was the largest publicly demonstrated anywhere to date. Over the past two years, despite the COVID-19 disruptions, work from Ph.D. students Behzad M., Tianliang Z., and Nathan E. alongside MSA members and vendors has continued to push forward innovation and allowed for exciting demos that include 400G ethernet.
Dr. Andrea Fumagalli, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, gave a talk about the initiatives taken at UTD to support the OpenROADM mission as part of the exhibit theater II track at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference in San Diego. Nathan E., a Ph.D. student, also presented his demo session presentation that was part of the technical track of the conference. Nathan won a spot to present their work competitively.
From the Cyberinfrastructure & Research Computing team members Gi Vania, Senior Director, and Joey Swift-White, Systems Engineer II, represented OIT in supporting the OpenROADM Demo. This booth was one of the 417 booths in attendance, and the only one that featured University representation. Team members worked to foster research collaborations and create partnerships with other attendees.
The impact on campus was positive. The first element of that impact is that attendance at our event helped our researchers get their work published in a widely read venue, which can help to spread the UT Dallas name. The second element was the fact that we were able to initiate interest in multiple in donating or loaning gear into our lab.
The keys to the success of this event were being able to showcase the largest public OpenROADM inter-op in the world and bring together multiple vendors’ equipment for demonstration. The resulting exposure for other vendors as well as the intelligent discussion will lead to further advances in this technology. This exposure will grow both our knowledge and the technology itself. It also enhanced UT Dallas’s name with some of the largest optical and networking vendors, manufactures and telecommunications operators in the world.
OFC: Optical Fiber Communications Conference and Exposition. (2022). OFCconference. Retrieved March 15, 2022, from https://www.ofcconference.org/en-us/home/about/