Ori Gerstel and Pat Iannone VOL. 7, NO. 1/JANUARY 2015/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW.

OFC1

Introduction to the OFC 2014

Special Issue
Ori Gerstel and Pat Iannone

AbstractWe are glad to provide our readers a special
issue of the best networking papers from OFC 2014. The
initial selection process involved the Editors-in-Chief of
JOCN and the OFC Program Chairs. We invited the best
contributed systems/networking papers of the conference
to submit to this invitation-only special issue. This special
issue is extensive and includes 59 papersalmost double
the number of papers published in last years special issue.
The main topics covered are elastic networks, software-
defined networks, and passive optical networks.
As in past years, we are glad to provide our readers a
special issue of the best networking papers from OFC 2014.
The editors-in-chief of JOCN, as well as the OFC program
chairs, invited the best contributed systems/networking
papers of the conference to submit to this invitation-only
special issue. The intent was to provide a high-quality
article collection on an expedited schedule, but without
compromising the rigorous selection process using our ex-
cellent editors and reviewers, who worked hard to reduce
the review time. As a result of this process, some of the in-
vited papers were rejected.
This OFC 2014 special issue is extensive and includes 59
papers, of which 14 were OFC invited papers and the rest
were highly ranked OFC contributed papers. The number
of papers in the special issue is almost double the number
of papers published in last years special issueand there-
fore provides a good one-stop-shop for top-quality optical
networking papers that have been screened twice for
relevance, innovation, and qualityonce through the OFC
selection process and once though the JOCN selection
process.
As in the last few years, this years selections include
many papers on elastic optical networksincluding
flexible use of spectrum and programmable transceivers.
However, this year many of these papers consider the use
of software defined networking (SDN) technology as a way
to improve the use of resources and the coordination among
nodes in an elastic network. More broadly, SDN is clearly
one of the key topics of this years crop, and it is interesting
to see that quite a few of these papers include experimen-
tation with SDNreflecting a transition in the state of this
technology from theory toward commercialization. In addi-
tion, quite a few papers are related to passive optical net-
works (PONs), reflecting a steady interest in technologies
that allow dramatic increases in user capacity. These PON
papers describe a range of research results, from near-term
work focused on optimizing and improving the time and
wavelength-division PON technology, slated to be the next
ITU-T standard, to more futuristic PON architectures re-
lying on advanced digital signal processing and/or coherent
detection.
We hope you enjoy this special issue.
Ori Gerstel and Pat Iannone
JOCN Editors-in-Chief

Manuscript received December 15, 2014; posted December 15, 2014;

published December 24, 2014 (Doc. ID 230875).
Ori Gerstel (e-mail: ori@ieee.org) is with Sedona Systems, 17 Hatidhar
Street, Raanana, Israel.
Patrick Iannone (e-mail: pat.iannone@alcatel-lucent.com) is with
Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/JOCN.7.00OFC1

1943-0620/15/01OFC1-01$15.00/0 2015 Optical Society of America