Space division multiplexing (SDM) exploiting spatial diversity to increase transmission capacity has been a hot research topic for photonics society over the past decade. From fiber innovation such as coupled-core fiber to petabit-per-second transmission over a single optical fiber, emerging SDM technologies start to make both academia and industry rethink about device design and system architecture.

 In this workshop, we discuss the enabling space division multiplexing technologies of fibers, amplification, devices, transmission and system.

 As networks continue to grow in scale and performance, they face increasingly complex challenges and must constantly push the boundaries of technology to evolve. The IEEE International Network Generation Roadmap (INGR), a part of the IEEE Future Networks Initiative, was created to develop a 10-year roadmap for wireless networks. Recently, the INGR has been expanded to include optical networks, including x-haul networks such as fronthaul, mid-haul, and backhaul. X-haul networks are a critical component of the next generation mobile networks, forming the fabric of interconnections between radio units, distributed units, and central units.

 As the density of cells and the bandwidth offered by these cells increase, future X-haul networks will face increasingly stringent requirements for delay, bandwidth, energy efficiency, latency, synchronization, and deployment flexibility and scalability. To meet these demands, a variety of transport technologies, including dark fiber, WDM, gray optics, and TDM-PON, will be critical.

 This workshop will explore the current state, future challenges, and potential solutions of X-haul networks, including optical transceivers, transport, synchronization, PON with CO-DBA/CTI, and other relevant topics.

 Description: Open and disaggregation have regained the interest of optical network industry and become one of the hot topics in the field. There are lots of effort in this area across the industry and various solutions have been proposed and tried, such as TAPI, OpenROADM, ODTN, whitebox solution, and SONiC for OTN. Where will open and disaggregated optical networks go? How open and disaggregation will they become? This workshop will bring together experts from hyperscalers, operators, system vendors and academia to debate on this topic.

The traditional datacenter networks (DCNs) based on all-electronic fat-tree architecture suffer from the issues of low capacity and scalability, long latency, and high power consumption. On the other hand, because all-optical technologies including optical transmission and switching have the advantages of high capacity, low power consumption, and better scalability, optical technologies are becoming more and more penetrating DCNs. Various electronic-optical hybrid architectures and even all-optical architectures have been proposed and studied. Testbeds and prototypes of these types of architectures have also been demonstrated by several important cloud service providers. A consensus seems to have been reached that optical technologies must and will be there in the future DCNs. 

This workshop aims at providing a platform for speakers and audience to discuss the challenges and solutions of optical technologies for DCNs. The topics will focus on several aspects: first, we will debate the necessity of optical technologies for DCNs; second, we will overview recent progress in short-reach optical transmission technology for DCNs; third, we will discuss all-optical switching technology and architectures for DCNs; fourth, we will discuss the control, management, and operation of optical-technology-enabled DCNs.

This workshop is expected to attract a strong industrial and academia audience as, in the current cloud-computing era, optical technologies for DCNs is becoming more interesting to service providers and network equipment vendors and what role the optical technologies will play in DCNs is still under extensive debate. 
This workshop will specifically discuss the following aspects:
1)    Is it necessary to bring optical technologies, especially optical switching, in DCNs?
2)    What role will optical technologies play in DCNs?
3)    When will optical technologies dominate DCNs?
4)    Which will be the main form in the future DCNs, electronic-optical hybrid or all-optical? For the hybrid type, what are the best percentages for electronic and optical technologies?
5)    Is it possible to have an architecture that can efficiently support both general data center traffic and special AI traffic? 
6)    Which switching type should be adopted for DCNs, packet switching or circuit switching? Which optical switching technologies will be employed for the future DCNs, and if so, which all-optical switching architecture will be, Torus or Clos?
7)    What values do DCN stakeholders expect milliseconds level optical switching to bring?
8)    Should we disaggregate the future DCNs, and if so, fully or partially?
9)    How to reduce service latency and power consumption of optical technology-enabled DCNs?
10)    How to improve scalability and reliability of optical technology-enabled DCNs?

 Light Detection and Ranging, especially autonomous LiDAR is a booming market full of disrupting technologies and rapid developments. From robot cars to robot vacuums, it offers ground-truth environmental data for sensing and classification and is identified as the key component to deliver safer and smarter autonomous vehicles. Building LiDAR systems of a more compact form-factor, at a lower cost and with less human labor while maintaining or improving key performance characteristics has been motivating researchers and developers to innovate and integrate.
This workshop intends to gather experts in the field to establish an overview of the current state of LiDAR research with a focus on:
•    Solid-state beamsteering technologies for LiDAR
•    Advances in ranging schemes including but not limited to ToF, FMCW, RMCW
•    Advances in LiDAR-oriented light sources that support the aforementioned ranging schemes    
•    An industry perspective on LiDAR and LiDAR technologies concerning packaging, scaling, and field stability with respect to automotive-grade specifications.
The workshop further aims at stipulating an open discussion between panelists and attendees on the challenges and opportunities envisaged in the deployment of next generation solid-state LiDARs.

 Today's enhanced data processing and communication needs continue to fuel an insatiable drive towards ever increasing computing power. As we approach the inevitable end of Moore's Law after almost half a century, computing architectures will need to change dramatically in order for innovation to continue. Integrated optical I/O building blocks will lead the way into this new era by bringing about the fusion of computing and optical technology.
This workshop intends to gather experts in the field to establish an overview of the current state of integrated optical I/O research with a focus on:
• Integrated photonic components for optical I/O
• Advances in Optical I/O design, modeling and analysis of novel propagation effects
• An industry perspective on integrated optical I/O
The workshop further aims at stipulating an open discussion between panelists and attendees on the challenges and opportunities envisaged in the deployment of massive integrated optical I/O for AI and high-speed computing.

 There has been explosive interest in short-reach optical communications because its diversity in applications and technologies. Many immerging applications such as body area networks, next generation PONs, datacenter networks, and mobile x-hual networks have created challenges in providing increasingly high date rate, improving network's interoperability, security, flexibility and adapatability with considerably reduced latency, while still greatly constraining the cost, power, and footprint. There presents an unprecedented research and development opportunity for both academia and industry. 
This workshop intends to gather experts in the field to establish an overview of the current state of short-reach optical communications with a focus on:
• Emerging applications, requirements and constraints for short-reach communications
• Technologies choices: Coherent-, direct- and self-coherent detection
• Photonic integration for short-reach communications 
• Advance photonic and digital signal processing for short-reach communications 
• Seamless network convergence between PONs, RANs and Li-Fi. The workshop further aims at stipulating an open discussion between panelists and attendees on the challenges and opportunities envisaged in short-reach systems. 

 Discuss and debate the latest advances on multicore fiber design, fabrication and applications of telecommunications and sensing. We aim to have an enhanced interactivities connecting with academia and industry, inspiring both the speakers and the audience, and brainstorming the possible roadmap for future technology development of multicore fibers