Advancements in Optical Fiber Communication and Networks

Dear Colleagues,

For decades, optical fiber communication and networks have served as the backbone of the modern telecommunication infrastructure that supports the internet. Driven by the demand of services such as 5G wireless, internet of things, big data processing, cloud computing, and social media, the ultimate goal of achieving high capacity, low latency, low cost, and low energy consumption has stimulated significant research efforts and novel technological advancements in recent years. Facing these stringent requirements, advanced signal shaping, spectra extension, space-division multiplexing, hollow-core fiber technology, integrated sensing and communication, and AI-based optical fiber transmission systems have attracted widespread attention, greatly promoting academic research and industrial applications.

First, as emerging technologies in recent years, advanced signal shaping, spectra extension, and space-division multiplexing have shown great potential in overcoming the capacity limits of current optical communication systems in single-mode fibers by optimizing the complex amplitude distribution of the transmitted signals, expanding the usable wavelength range within each fiber core, and transmitting parallel data streams over spatially independent paths. Furthermore, the effective and organic combination of these three technologies is urgently needed to maximize the transmission capacity of the whole system. Second, hollow-core fiber (HCF) has emerged as a revolutionary technology, potentially enabling long-haul, large-capacity, and low-latency signal transmission due to its ultra-low loss, reduced dispersion/nonlinearity, and low-latency optical properties. Third, in addition to the fibers’ role as transmission media for digital signals, they can also serve as sensing media. This presents an opportunity to enhance the value of fiber assets and create ubiquitous monitoring systems for applications such as smart cities, smart communities, and smart factories. Various innovative ideas and schemes should be collected to address the challenges in sensing and communication integration. Finally, machine learning (ML) has been seen to be appropriately applied to optical transmission systems, revolutionizing the traditional paradigm. Combined with ML, the performance of optical monitoring, format identification, imperfection estimation, channel modeling, and linear/nonlinear equalization can be significantly improved.

For the above-mentioned technologies, the development of key devices, algorithms, and system architectures is also crucial, and many of their new features would be discovered and explored in the process. This Special Issue focuses on the emerging mainstream technologies applied in optical fiber communication systems. Original research papers and review articles are all welcome on a wide range of topics, including but not limited to:

• Subsystems and systems for optical fiber communications and networks;
• Theory, design, fabrication, characterization, and connectivity of the transmission medium, including hollow-core fibers, few-mode fibers, multi-core fibers, etc.;
• Active and passive devices and components, including lasers, amplifiers, fan-in fan-out devices, (de-)multiplexers, mode field adapters, wavelength select switches, photodetectors, receivers, etc.;
• Pulse shaping or modulation techniques for optical fiber communications;
• Spectra extension for wideband optical fiber transmission;
• Space-division multiplexing for optical fiber transmission;
• Integrated sensing and communication in optical fibers;
• Artificial intelligence for optical fiber communication;
• Artificial intelligence-driven optical fiber transmission systems;
• Digital twin optical networks;
• Digital signal processing techniques for long-distance and short-reach applications;
• Optical network design, optimization, and monitoring;
• Other emerging technologies and trends in optical fiber communication and networks. 

Dr. Zhiqun Yang
Dr. Yaping Liu
Guest Editors

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• fiber communication
• fiber sensing
• optical network
• space-division multiplexing
• multicore fiber
• few-mode fiber
• hollow-core fiber
• fiber amplifier
• photodetector
• coherent receiver
• artificial intelligence
• machine learning
• neural network
• optical network monitoring
• digital signal processing