Technical Conference: 15 - 19 March 2026
Exhibition: 17 - 19 March 2026
Los Angeles Convention Center | Los Angeles, California, USA

Technical Conference: 15 - 19 March 2026
Exhibition: 17 - 19 March 2026
Los Angeles Convention Center | Los Angeles, California, USA

Short Courses

Enhance Your Conference Experience

Short Courses are an excellent training opportunity to learn about new products, cutting-edge technology and vital information at the forefront of communications. They cover a broad range of topic areas at a variety of educational levels. The courses are taught by highly regarded industry experts on a number of subjects, and modest class sizes offer the opportunity for more personalized instruction.

Short Courses

Short Course

8:30 AM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Modulation Formats and Receiver Concepts for Optical Transmission Systems

The ever-increasing traffic demands in carrier networks, driven by emerging data-centric services and applications, have led to intense research and development in the area of high-capacity (several 10 Tbit/s), high-speed (up to 400 Gb/s per wavelength) optical transport networks. In order to...

Short Course

8:30 AM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

400, 800Gb/s and Beyond Optical Communications Systems: Design and Design Trade-offs

The increasing demand for data and video-intensive content and the adoption of cloud services are driving the need for ever-increasing capacity in service providers’ backbone and metro networks, while also creating the need for high-speed interconnect of hyper-scale data centers. To meet...

Short Course

8:30 AM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Modeling and Simulation of Optical Transmitter and Receiver Components for Coherent Communications

As demand for network bandwidth continues to grow unabated, coherent optical communication systems – once limited to the domain of long-haul transmission systems – are finding increasingly widespread deployment at scale, from metro/regional networks to data center interconnects....

Short Course

8:30 AM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Hands on Silicon Photonics Design & Fabrication

This short course teaches participants how to model silicon photonic components, design and have fabricated simple passive photonic integrated circuits (PICs) that are experimentally characterized. Numerous companies are presently developing products in applications such as short-reach optical...

Short Course

8:30 AM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

FPGA Prototyping for Optical Subsystems

The course is intended for the students and engineers who have a basic background and experience in optical subsystems and the design of DSP algorithms but are beginners in the FPGA programming and FPGA prototyping of optical subsystems. The course gives insights to participants on FPGA...

Short Course

8:30 AM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

High-capacity Data Center Interconnects for Cloud-scale Networking

This short course gives a broad overview of data center interconnect (DCI) architectures and technology in cloud-scale networks, ranging from short-haul interconnects of just a few kilometers across a campus network, to metro and finally long-haul deployments. In particular, we focus in this...

Short Course

8:30 AM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Hands-on: Laboratory Automation and Control using Python

This course aims to provide participants with the tools and knowledge to create sustainable automation of their experiments using the Python programming language.

This is a beginner’s course, which does not assume any prior knowledge in Python or lab automation, or those...

Short Course

8:30 AM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Data Center Short Links – Link Design, Modeling, Test and Measurements

The first half of the course will cover the design of data center optical links. We will describe the basic components of data center optical links and introduce the concept of the power budget including power penalties and examine possible tradeoffs. We will continue with a discussion of...

Short Course

8:30 AM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Applications of Coherent Distributed Fiber Sensing in Optical Communication Networks

This short course focuses on fiber sensing utilizing the deployed active fiber-optic telecommunication network. Specifically, the curriculum emphasizes distributed fiber sensing through the analysis of backscattered light from optical fibers, with a primary concentration on distributed...

Short Course

9:00 AM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Technologies and Applications for Passive Optical Networks (PONs)

This short course offers a comprehensive introduction to the architectures of passive optical
networks (PONs), examining their various types, key features, and global market deployments.
Participants will gain a clear understanding of the enabling technologies that drive PON systems...

Short Course

9:00 AM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

ROADM Technologies and Network Applications

In the past 15 years fiber optic transmission platforms around the world have aggressively adopted Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexer (ROADM) into the system product lines, including annual deployments approaching $1 billion of ROADM-packet enabled transport equipment. Despite this...

Short Course

9:00 AM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Space Division Multiplexing for Optical Communication Systems and Networks

The transmission capacity required by modern fiber-optic communication systems often significantly exceeds the capacity of a single fiber, therefore requiring new cost effective fibers and components to support massive parallel optical paths (space-division multiplexing).
...

Short Course

9:00 AM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Multimode Photonic Devices, Characterization and Applications

This course is an introduction into multimode devices that control, generate, amplify and manipulate spatial modes. Multimode components are used in many diverse fields including imaging, astronomy, and space-division multiplexing (SDM) communications. These devices include lossless mode...

Short Course

1:00 PM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Optical Amplifiers: From Fundamental Principles to Technology Trends

Optical amplification is a key enabler of modern optical communication systems. Not only do optical amplifiers eliminate the need for electronic repeaters between the fiber spans, but they also do it in a cost-effective way by simultaneously processing a large number of optical channels. The...

Short Course

1:00 PM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

The Life Cycle of an Optical Network: From Planning to Decommissioning

This course walks the delegates through an entire optical network life cycle from an operator’s point of view, from the initial requirements, vendor selection, network design and planning, installation and provisioning, operation and management and final use as a legacy technology before...

Short Course

1:00 PM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Modern Subsea Cable Systems

From the first fiber optic subsea cable to today’s SDM cable system, the capacity per cable has increased 5 orders of magnitudes over the past 30 years. This exponential increase has been driven by ever-growing traffic demands and has been enabled by enormous technological advances in...

Short Course

1:00 PM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

FEC Techniques for Optical Communications

Error-control coding, the technique of adding redundancy in a controlled fashion to transmitted data so as to correct errors introduced by noise or other channel impairments, is a key component of modern optical communication systems. This course introduces basic concepts in coding and...

Short Course

1:00 PM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Optical Networking

In recent years, Reinforcement learning (RL) and Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) have gained significant attention due to their ability to handle complex...

Short Course

1:30 PM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Microwave Photonics

RSVP Required Full Conference Registration Required

The field of microwave photonics, sometimes termed RF photonics or analog photonics, has a long history and continues to expand despite the advances in digital electronics and optics.  The Microwave Photonics Short Course has been revised and updated to keep pace with the accelerating...

Short Course

1:30 PM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

An Introduction to Optical Network Design and Planning

This course is an introduction to optical network design and planning for backbone, regional, and metro-core networks. A fundamental aspect of any optical network design is selecting the proper network equipment to maximize scalability and configurability, while minimizing cost. The course will...

Short Course

1:30 PM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Silicon Microphotonics: Technology Elements and the Roadmap to Implementation

The optical components industry stands at the threshold of a major expansion that will restructure its business processes and sustain its profitability for the next three decades. This growth will establish a cost-effective platform for the partitioning of electronic and photonic functionality to...

Short Course

1:30 PM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Modeling and Design of Long-Haul Fiber-Optic Communication Systems

The broad objective of this course is to provide a working knowledge of the numerous techniques and tools used to model and design the physical transport layer of fiber-optic communication networks. The main focus is to provide a comprehensive overview of nonlinear propagation modeling in optical...

Short Course

1:30 PM
15 March 2026

Location TBA

Background Concepts of Optical Communication Systems

Optical communication systems have provided ever-increasing data transmission capacities, and there is a set of core concepts that are fundamental to understanding many of the crucial technical areas. The OFC/NFOEC conference has numerous courses teaching advanced topics that require some...

Short Course

8:30 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Hands on: Silicon Photonics Design - Circuits

In this course, we start with circuit design in silicon photonics. As fabrication technology is steadily improving, it becomes possible to implement more complex functionality as a circuit. Circuits are an abstraction where the function is defined as a connected network of functional...

Short Course

8:30 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Highly Integrated Monolithic Photonic Integrated Circuits

This course teaches the fundamentals of photonic integrated circuits with a focus on the telecomm and datacomm industry.  It starts with the basics of optical waveguides and moves to more and more complex devices.  It describes many state-of-the art devices and explains how they work...

Short Course

8:30 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Hands On:Test and Measurement for Coherent Optical Transceivers

Coherent technology was traditionally used in long-haul and metro networks. However, over the years, it has been increasingly adopted for shorter-reach applications—such as Data Center Interconnects (DCI) and 5G/6G front/backhaul—to overcome the physical limitations of Intensity...

Short Course

8:30 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Digital Signal Processing for Coherent Optical Transceivers

Digital signal processing (DSP) has always been an intrinsic component of optical communications, albeit for simple modulation techniques, framing and coding. The development of high-speed ADCs and DACs, and the increase in data processing power of CMOS ICs has enabled the implementation of...

Short Course

8:30 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Emerging Optical Network Technologies towards 2030

This course covers emerging optical network technologies towards 2030, which include:

  • ...

Short Course

8:30 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Hands-on Fiber Optic Handling, Measurements, and Component Testing

This Short Course focuses on the practical aspects of working with fiber optic components and instrumentation used to make optical performance characterization measurements.

Through three individual and fully-equipped stations you will get the basic concepts and hands-on use of...

Short Course

8:30 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Hands-on Fiber Optic Handling, Measurements, and Component Testing

This Short Course focuses on the practical aspects of working with fiber optic components and instrumentation used to make optical performance characterization measurements.

Through three individual and fully-equipped stations you will get the basic concepts and hands-on use of...

Short Course

8:30 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

AI-Driven Optical Transport Networks: Architectures, Applications, and Intelligent Automation

This short course covers practical applications of T-SDN and AI-enabled automation in optical transport networks, extending classical SDN concepts with ML, LLMs, and agentic AI. Using a problem-solution approach, we explore how service providers, hyperscalers, and enterprises can leverage...

Short Course

8:30 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Photonic Switching Systems

This course consists of two parts focusing respectively on free-space switching systems with near-term commercial impact and on chip-scale photonic switching systems with potential for future commercial impact.

The first part will provide an overview of photonic cross connects...

Short Course

8:30 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Machine Learning in Optical Networks

Machine learning (ML) has recently attracted a surge of interest in optical networking and communication research due to its pattern recognition and predictive capabilities for various key applications. Large-scale monitoring data are generated every day in optical networks, which makes ML a...

Short Course

8:30 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Hands-On: Laboratory Automation and Control using Python (Advanced)

This course aims to provide participants with the tools and knowledge to create sustainable automation of their experiments using the Python programming language.

This is an advanced Python Short Course which assumes participants have significant programming experience with...

Short Course

8:30 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Satellite Communications

We will address the architecture of optical satellite networks from the Physical to the Transport and Application Layers. New frontiers exist for much more research before an efficient architecture can be constructed. Optical wireless network has the potential to serve space-space, space...

Short Course

9:00 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

High-Speed Semiconductor Lasers and Modulators

Amplitude and phase modulation of light for transmission at 10, 40 and 100 Gbit/s and beyond are a critical problem for fiber-optic networks. We will review the basic concepts of optical modulators, with emphasis on electroabsorption modulators. The fundamental physics and design of modulators...

Short Course

9:00 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Reliability and Qualification of Fiber-Optic Components

Reliability and qualification of photonic components, equipment and systems are two critical requisites for our modern telecommunication infrastructure.  They are usually one of a customer’s early areas of intensive inquiry for a new supplier and, potentially, some of the biggest...

Short Course

9:00 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Networking for Datacenters and Machine Learning

Over the past decade, data centers have rapidly grown as an enabler of new applications and capabilities (cloud computing, machine learning, internet content streaming, internet search, social networking, etc.). As such, networks inside the datacenter have become the singular force driving the...

Short Course

9:00 AM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Transmission Fiber and Cables

With over 3 billion kilometers of transmission optical fiber deployed world-wide, and many hundreds of millions of kilometers being added annually to support the ever-increasing demand for bandwidth, the future has never looked brighter for optical networking. Optical fiber cable has long...

Short Course

1:30 PM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Applications of Radio-over-Fiber Technologies Including Future G Networks

The use of fiber-optic links for transporting radio signals in wireless networks is a well-established technology, and the convergence of optical and wireless networks continues to evolve. Fiber-optic remoting of radio signals is used in a diversity of wireless networks, including indoor/in...

Short Course

1:30 PM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Standards for High-Speed Optical Networking

This course provides details of a complementary set of standards for high-speed optical networking including the Optical...

Short Course

1:30 PM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Circuits and Equalization Methods for Coherent and Direct Detection Optical Links

We will start with an overview and comparison of different types of optical links: intensity modulated direct detection vs coherent, short reach vs long reach, multi-mode fiber vs single mode, direct modulation vs external modulation. We will discuss the main components of the link data path...

Short Course

1:30 PM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Photonic Technologies in Datacenters and AI Machines

This course will discuss and detail the photonic technologies that are used to connect datacenters. Data center optical interconnects are extremely interesting since they blur the line between traditional datacom and telecom links. The reach requirements, from meters to up to around two...

Short Course

1:30 PM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Introduction to Photodetectors and Optical Receivers

This course will cover photodetectors most frequently employed for optical receivers, primarily p-i-n and avalanche photodiodes. Their performance parameters and the physical effects that determine those parameters will be discussed. This course will also cover fundamental optical receiver...

Short Course

1:30 PM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Introduction to Software Defined Networking: Architectures, Protocols and Design Principles

This is an advanced-beginner course on Software Defined Networking (SDN) for optical networks. The course will cover the main drivers, uses, key benefits, most recent trends and underlying technologies focusing, notably, on transport networks and covering mainly the aggregation and core...

Short Course

1:30 PM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing for Communication Networks and Infrastructure Applications

This course reviews fiber optic sensing (FOS) technology with a principal focus on distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS) systems, as well as the associated specialty fiber types and optical components commonly required to provide full sensing systems. Emphasis is placed on reviewing DFOS uses...

Short Course

1:30 PM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Advanced Fiber Access Networks

This course complements short courses SC114 and SC444, and focuses on the overall broadband access system technology and network architecture from an operator’s perspective.

The course begins with an overview of fiber access architectures and drivers for future technology...

Short Course

1:30 PM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Photonic and electronic packaging - materials, processes, equipment and reliability

Error-control coding, the technique of adding redundancy in a controlled fashion to transmitted data so as to correct errors introduced by noise or other channel impairments, is a key component of modern optical communication systems. This course introduces basic concepts in coding and...

Short Course

1:30 PM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Optical Wireless Technologies, Systems and Applications

The course focuses on the design of optical wireless transmission systems for high-speed optical wireless communications, including applications such as outdoor point-to-point free-space optical (FSO) links for both terrestrial and non-terrestrial use, as well as underwater optical wireless...

Short Course

1:30 PM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Fiber Optic OFC NET Course- Practical Fiber Optic Network Testing Hands-On Short Course in a Realis

Whatever would be the applications (5G, FTTX, MXU, structured cabling, HFC, Quantum optical transmission, etc) it is usually fed with fiber optic.

In a world where datacom is merging with telecom accelerating the deployment of high-speed interfaces on disaggregated networks webbed in...

Short Course

1:30 PM
16 March 2026

Location TBA

Generative AI Essentials for Telecommunications: from Fundamentals to Implementation

Generative AI (GenAI) is transforming how telecom networks are operated, optimized, and experienced by customers. Traditional network operations rely heavily...