Client-side optics are facing an ever-increasing upgrading pace, driven by upcoming 5G related services and datacenter applications. The demand for a single lane data rate is soon approaching 200 Gbps. To meet such high-speed requirements, all segments of traditional intensity modulation direct detection (IM/DD) technologies are being challenged. The characteristics of electrical and optoelectronic components, and the performance of modulation, coding and digital signal processing (DSP) techniques are being stretched to their limits. In this context, we witnessed technological breakthroughs in several aspects, including development of broadband devices, novel modulation formats and coding, and high-performance DSP algorithms for the past few years. A great momentum has been accumulated to overcome the aforementioned challenges. In this paper, we focus on IM/DD transmissions, and provide an overview of recent research and development efforts on key enabling technologies for 200 Gbps per lane and beyond. Our recent demonstrations of 200 Gbps short-reach transmissions with 4-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) and discrete multitone signals are also presented as examples to show the system requirements in terms of device characteristics and DSP performance. Apart from digital coherent technologies and advanced direct detection systems, such as Stokes-vector and Kramers-Kronig schemes, we expect high-speed IM/DD systems will remain advantageous in terms of system cost, power consumption and footprint for short reach applications in the short- to mid- term perspective.

Dynamic bandwidth allocation in passive optical networks presents a key issue for providing efficient and fair utilization of the PON upstream bandwidth while supporting the QoS requirements of different traffic classes. In this article we compare the typical characteristics of DBA, such as bandwidth utilization, delay, and jitter at different traffic loads, within the two major standards for PONs, Ethernet PON and gigabit PON. A particular PON standard sets the framework for the operation of DBA and the limitations it faces. We illustrate these differences between EPON and GPON by means of simulations for the two standards. Moreover, we consider the evolution of both standards to their next-generation counterparts with the bit rate of 10 Gb/s and the implications to the DBA. A new simple GPON DBA algorithm is used to illustrate GPON performance. It is shown that the length of the polling cycle plays a crucial but different role for the operation of the DBA within the two standards. Moreover, only minor differences regarding DBA for current and next-generation PONs were found.

Fiber to the home is the future-proof technology for broadband access networks. Several fiber access network architectures have been developed (e.g., point-to-point, active optical network, and passive optical network). PON is considered the most promising solution due to the relatively low deployment cost and high resource efficiency. Meanwhile, because of the growing demand for reliable service delivery, fault management is becoming more significant in all parts of communications networks. However, there is a trade-off between the cost of protection and the level of service reliability. Since economical aspects are most critical in the access part of networks, improving reliability performance by duplication of network resources (and capital expenditures) could be too expensive. Therefore, recent work has focused on PON protection schemes with reduced CAPEX. The future trend will probably migrate toward minimizing operational expenditures during the access network lifetime. The main contributions of this article include providing a general method for CAPEX and OPEX analysis that can be applied to any type of fiber access network with consideration of changed component cost in time and variable take rates, and comparing the total cost (i.e., sum of CAPEX and OPEX) for the selected representative architectures with and without protection for business and residential users in relation to reliability performance. The aim is to give a guideline for the design of the most cost-effective protection schemes, while maintaining acceptable service reliability.

Since about one and half centuries ago, at the dawn of modern communications, the radio and the optics have been two separate electromagnetic spectrum regions to carry data. Differentiated by their generation/detection methods and propagation properties, the two paths have evolved almost independently until today. The optical technologies dominate the long-distance and high-speed terrestrial wireline communications through fiber-optic telecom systems, whereas the radio technologies have mainly dominated the short- to medium-range wireless scenarios. Now, these two separate counterparts are both facing a sign of saturation in their respective roadmap horizons, particularly in the segment of free-space communications. The optical technologies are extending into the mid-wave and long-wave infrared (MWIR and LWIR) regimes to achieve better propagation performance through the dynamic atmospheric channels. Radio technologies strive for higher frequencies like the millimeter-wave (MMW) and sub-terahertz (sub-THz) to gain broader bandwidth. The boundary between the two is becoming blurred and intercrossed. During the past few years, we witnessed technological breakthroughs in free-space transmission supporting very high data rates, many achieved with the assistance of photonics. This paper focuses on such photonics-assisted free-space communication technologies in both the lower and upper sides of the THz gap and provides a detailed review of recent research and development activities on some of the key enabling technologies. Our recent experimental demonstrations of high-speed free-space transmissions in both frequency regions are also presented as examples to show the system requirements for device characteristics and digital signal processing (DSP) performance.

Security issues and attack management in transparent wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks have become of prime importance to network operators due to the high data rates involved and the vulnerabilities associated with transparency. Deliberate physical-layer attacks, such as high-powered jamming, can seriously degrade network performance and must be dealt with efficiently. While most approaches are focused on the developing fast detection and reaction mechanisms triggered in case of an attack, we propose a novel approach to help deal with these issues in the network planning and provisioning process as a prevention mechanism. Namely, we propose to route lightpaths in such a way as to minimize the potential damage caused by various physical-layer attacks. We present a new objective criterion for the routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem, which we call the maximum Lightpath Attack Radius (maxLAR), and formulate the routing subproblem as an integer linear program (ILP). We test it on small networks to get an insight into its complexity and compare it to a formulation that minimizes congestion. Results indicate that our formulation achieves significantly better results for the maxLAR while obtaining near-optimal or optimal congestion in all cases. For larger networks, we propose a tabu search algorithm for attack-aware lightpath routing, in combination with an existing graph-coloring algorithm for wavelength assignment. Testing and comparing with existing approaches from literature indicate its superiority with respect to the maxLAR and average lightpath load, albeit at the expense of somewhat higher congestion. However, this is justified with the obtained improvement in network security.

Quantum key distribution (QKD) has demonstrated a great potential to provide future-proofed security, especially for 5G and beyond communications. As the critical infrastructure for 5G and beyond communications, optical networks can offer a cost-effective solution to QKD deployment utilizing the existing fiber resources. In particular, measurement-device-independent QKD shows its ability to extend the secure distance with the aid of an untrusted relay. Compared to the trusted relay, the untrusted relay has obviously better security, since it does not rely on any assumption on measurement and even allows to be accessed by an eavesdropper. However, it cannot extend QKD to an arbitrary distance like the trusted relay, such that it is expected to be combined with the trusted relay for large-scale QKD deployment. In this work, we study the hybrid trusted/untrusted relay based QKD deployment over optical backbone networks and focus on cost optimization during the deployment phase. A new network architecture of hybrid trusted/untrusted relay based QKD over optical backbone networks is described, where the node structures of the trusted relay and untrusted relay are elaborated. The corresponding network, cost, and security models are formulated. To optimize the deployment cost, an integer linear programming model and a heuristic algorithm are designed. Numerical simulations verify that the cost-optimized design can significantly outperform the benchmark algorithm in terms of deployment cost and security level. Up to 25% cost saving can be achieved by deploying QKD with the hybrid trusted/untrusted relay scheme while keeping much higher security level relative to the conventional point-to-point QKD protocols that are only with the trusted relays.