1) Fibers, Fiber Devices and Fiber Amplifiers

• Optical fiber design, fabrication and characterisation
• Physics of light propagation in optical fibers
• Fiber amplifiers and fibre lasers
• Fiber based devices for telecommunication, sensing and other applications
• Highly nonlinear fibers and their applications for nonlinear optical signal processing
• Specialty optical fibers for improved linear and/or nonlinear transmission performance
• Low-latency fibers and fibers for new wavelength ranges

2) Integrated Optoelectronic Devices and Optical Processors

• Design, fabrication and characterisation of devices and components
• Novel integrated devices and functionalities
• Integrated light sources, directly modulated lasers and VCSELs in bulk, quantum well, quantum dot or other materials
• Integrated III-V, including InP and GaAs, data modulators, detectors, amplifiers and switches
• Silicon and hybrid III-V/silicon photonics for data modulation, detection, amplification, switching and interconnecting
• Packaging of advanced novel devices, testing of performance and reliability
• Novel material platforms and structured materials such as photonic crystals, plasmonics, graphene a.o.
• Integrated nonlinear waveguides on various material platforms for optical signal processing

3) Digital Techniques for Optical Communication Systems

• Modelling, design, and implementation of digital signal processing for long-haul, to medium- and short-range optical communication systems
• Novel digital signal processing algorithms for optical transmitters and receivers, and DSP algorithms with reduced complexity
• Novel error correction coding, advanced data encoding and signal shaping for optical communication links
• Schemes for impairment mitigation, increased spectral efficiency and mutual information, including nonlinear Fourier transformation and digital back-propagation

4) Transmission Subsystems and Optical Network Elements

• Modelling, design, implementation and test of optical, optoelectronic, or electrical (incl. DAC/ADC) subsystems
• Line terminals, optical transmitter and receiver subsystems for advanced modulation formats and increased speed and/or capacity
• Multiplexing and demultiplexing subsystems for advanced and/or spectrally efficient data formats including DMT, OFDM, OCDMA and Nyquist-WDM
• Optical performance monitoring techniques and subsystems
• Subsystems for network functionalities, including e.g. wavelength-selective switching, add-drop multiplexing, optical switching, optical packet routing, system-on-a-chip (SoC) and on-chip networks
• Analog signal processing subsystems and novel schemes of nonlinear optical signal processing for subsystem-functionalities

5) Datacom and Computercom Hardware

• Deployable technology, like real-time online processing systems and low-cost solutions, including novel packaging of integrated optics and parallel transceivers, and Si photonic low-cost solutions
• Demonstrations, network deployments and field trials using novel architectures and/or novel switching schemes and technologies, including SDN over WDM, TDM, SDM optical switching and/or hybrid electronic/optical or all-electronic switching
• Data center and HPCS (High Performance Computing System) specific hardware, including VCSEL based parallel links with advanced modulation, hybrid integrated electronic/optical engines for broadband interconnecting and WDM/CWDM interconnects
• Demonstrations using novel network devices, including nanophotonic high-density components for on-chip networks, as well as integrated spatial multiplexers for high-density parallelism, novel interconnects and transceivers

6) Point-to-Point Transmission Links

• Transmission system modelling
• Lab and field implementation of optical fiber transmission links
• Lab and field implementation of free-space optical and THz wireless transmission links.
• Satellite communication links
• Transmission system level implications of physical impairments and impairment mitigation techniques
• Capacity, reach, flexibility of optical transmission systems and solutions to overcome the current limitations
• Demonstrations of combined novel fibers, devices, subsystems and multiplexing techniques in transmission experiments
• Quantum communication systems

7) Core, Metro, and Data Center Networks

• Networking aspects of architecture, planning and scaling of broadband optical transport for optical circuit- and packet-switched core, metro and data center networks, including cost and energy considerations
• Control, orchestration, and management functions, as well as integration with higher layer network services
• Network deployments and field trials
• Architecture, planning and scaling of optical transport for inter- and intra-data center and HPCS networks
• Network management, control plane design and orchestration of data centers and HPCS for photonic and hybrid photonic/electronic interconnects
• Energy, scalability, latency considerations for data center and HPCS networks

8) Access, Local Area and Indoor Networks

• Photonics for 5G technologies
• Photonics for Cloud services
• Fiber-to-the-premises (FTTx)
• Passive optical access networks
• In-building optical networks
• Radio-over-fiber systems
• Optical free-space communication systems
• Hybrid wireless/optical free-space network solutions