Since its introduction a decade ago, probabilistic amplitude shaping (PAS) has evolved from a topic of academic interest to a mainstream, near ubiquitous technology adopted across a wide range of optical systems — from traditional long-haul deployments to compact pluggable transceivers.
In this panel, we will reflect on the progress made over the past ten years, examine the state-of-the-art in both research and products, and explore opportunities for future developments. Discussion topics include:
- The evolution of shaping algorithms and key implementations of PAS;
- Considerations for hardware implementation of probabilistic shaping, including complexity, parallelism, and latency;
- Shaping for pluggable DSP implementations and standardized PAS algorithms;
- PAS-enabled capabilities and future research directions, such as its application to non-AWGN channels (e.g., unamplified links and nonlinear channels) and its interactions with other system components (e.g., forward error correction and carrier phase recovery).