Monday 19th September
11:20 – 11:50 Beyond 800G pluggable – what challenges lie ahead for the ecosystem – Dr Paul Brooks – director of product and technology support, VIAVI Solutions
Beyond 800G pluggables are becoming an important theme, we see the early ramp of 800G clients and 400G coherent and now the industry must set out a path of an ecosystem beyond 800G. We give a T&M perspective of the challenges ahead to successful develop and ramp in a post 800G world!
12:00 – 12:30 The Growing Need for Tunable Lasers: Focus on Metro, DCI and Access Networks, Joost Verberk, Director of Product Management, Effect Photonics
In situations where fiber is not readily available, due to fiber exhaust or limited penetration, tunable lasers and DWDM are helping to expand capacity for metro, DCI and access applications.  Even in areas where plenty of fiber is available, those techniques help maximize the ROI of a service provider’s fiber infrastructure.    Further, advances in coherent technology and pluggable transceivers have enabled widespread deployment of IP over DWDM services and self-tuning algorithms have simplified the installation and maintenance of DWDM.  As a result, metro transport, DCI and future access networks are moving towards coherent tunable pluggables, with annual sales forecast to double by 2026.
12:30 – 13:10 Extending Coherent to the Edge with XR Optics – Fady Masoud, Director, Solutions Marketing at Infinera
With the number of connected devices and bandwidth demand skyrocketing, service providers are faced with the challenges of coping with massive growth in bandwidth, reducing CapEx/OpEx, and simplifying the network. These challenges can only be overcome by a major shift in technology – extending coherent technology to the edge. This session discusses how XR optics can help service providers extend coherent technology to the edge, enabling an order of magnitude increase in capacity, significant reduction in TCO (70%), dramatic network simplification and software-configurable capacity allocation.
13:20 – 13:50 Novel micro-optics solutions through monolithic integration of microlenses and prisms – Wilfried Noell, Director of research and development  Justine Lullin, Project and Engineering manager, SUSS MicroOptics
Micro-optical solutions based on micro-lenses are unleashing innovation in such diverse fields as 5G, the Internet of Things, autonomous driving. However, the test, assembly and packaging of microscale devices remains a significant challenge.   In this context, the compact integration of both micro-lenses and micro-prism provides an enticing solution to challenges faced in many applications such as Photonic Integrated circuit, Optical subassemblies and transceivers or LIDAR.  Recently, innovative combination of process technology has allowed SUSS MicroOptics to monolithically integrate lenses and prisms on the micro-scale. We present here the manufacturing of both silicon and fused silica micro-prism integrated on a micro-lens.
14:00 – 14:30 A Novel Fiber Assembly for Co-Packaged Optics – Hesham Taha, PhD, CEO, Teramount Ltd
Packaging trends for silicon photonics technology are lagging behind the demands of applications that require high bandwidth and low power consumption such as ethernet switches, advanced computing, chip-to-chip optical connectivity and other datacom and telecom applications. A new and effective packaging solution that is compatible with conventional high-volume manufacturing and packaging of the semiconductor industry is required. We report a PhotonicPlug technology that offers a re-workable and detachable connectivity of large number of fibers, an unprecedented ±30µm/0.5dB fiber assembly tolerances, post reflow assembly and full compatibility with co-packaged optics and electronics packages. The PhotonicPlug technology takes advantage from wafer level manufacturing processes for accurate placement of optics and for aligning silicon photonics with standard semiconductor manufacturing and packaging flow.
14:40 – 15:10 Avicena’s LightBundle GaN microLEDs on Silicon enable ultra-low Energy Interconnects for Chip-to-Chip Communications – Chris Pfistner  Vice President, Sales & Marketing, Avicena
Avicena has demonstrated LightBundleTM interconnects with less than 2pJ/bit and will soon unveil sub-1pJ/bit links.  The technology is based on arrays of innovative GaN micro-emitters that leverage the microLED display ecosystem and can be integrated into high performance CMOS ICs.  The parallel nature of LightBundle™ is well matched to parallel chiplet interfaces like UCIe, OpenHBI, and BoW, and can also be used to extend the reach of compute interconnects like PCIe/CXL, or HBM/DDR/GDDR memory links.
15:20 – 15:50 iCLA – integrated comb laser assembly for coherent DWDM superchannels – Dr. Frank Smyth, Founder and CTO, Pilot Photonics Ltd
As the industry looks towards 1.6T and 3.2T channel rates, multi-wavelength superchannels are expected to be required. Comb lasers offer benefits over independent lasers in terms of cost, footprint, and power while also enabling enhanced spectral efficiency and reduced DSP complexity. The integrated comb laser assembly (iCLA) builds on the heritage of the industry workhorse, iTLA. It uses gain switched comb source technology and monolithically integrated injection locked demultiplexers to deliver multiple coherent wavelengths on individual fibers from a single module to drive multiple 400G and 800G coherent optical engines.
16:00 – 16:30 Latest innovations and optical fibre benefits in the automotive and industrial sector – Carlos Pardo – CEO at KDPOF
Noise in large installations, for example in factories, can interfere with communications when copper cables are used. In stand-alone environments, such as a vehicle, we also encounter a lot of communication pollution when using a copper-based system. A fibre optic-based system in Ethernet communication has several advantages that solve the problems caused by interference from different sources. KDPOF will present their next-generation transceivers based on the optical multi-gigabit technology (xGBase-AU standards) and the advantages of its application in the automotive and industrial sector, compared to xGBase-T1 copper solutions, that includes low cost, easy engineering, higher reach, EMC-issues free, galvanic isolation, , industrial temperature range (from -40ºC until 150ºC), robust and low-cost connectors and scalability.

Tuesday 20th September
09:30 – 10:00 State of play of  FTTH roll out in Europe – Vincent Garnier, Director General, FTTH Council Europe
More than half of European households now have access to full fibre connectivity and we witness a surge in Public and Private investment in support of aggressive FTTH roll out plans. However a lot still has to be done to make sure our continent has the fibre infrastructure it requires to meet the challenges of a green and digital society. This review of FTTH roll out throughout Europe will be followed by a focus on the key challenges the industry will be facing in the years to come.
10:10 – 11:10 ECOC Exhibition Industry Awards Announcements
Hear the winners as they are announced – ECOC TV
11:20 – 11:50 Testing essentials for your MPO system – Alfonso Domesi, EMEA Business Development Manager, EXFO
Data center, 5G, broadband, and high-speed link deployments are driving the number of multifiber push-on connectors (MPOs) to optimize installation, opening the door to new issues.  Get insights into best practices for technicians testing MPO links, including the inspection of MPO connector endfaces; how to mitigate the impact of damaged or dirty multifiber connectors, and streamlined Tier-1 certification of MPO links. In addition to current technologies, testing standards and solutions, the discussion will also cover proper methods of procedure to minimize operational costs and wasted time.
12:00 – 12:30 The Opportunities and Design Challenges of Co-packaged Optics – Ansys
Silicon photonics is a proven technology for high-speed, low-cost, high-volume pluggable transceivers. However, as data speeds and power budgets become increasingly demanding, there is a market need for co-packaged optics. While initially driven by switching needs, co-packaged optics will enable many innovations, including disaggregated compute architectures. The design of these systems is immensely challenging and requires high performance electronic photonic design automation (EPDA) workflows, as well as solutions to complex multiphysics problems such as the thermal analysis of full 3D ICs with silicon photonic interposers. In this talk, I review the opportunities, challenges and design solutions of co-packaged optics.
12:40 – 13:10 Innovation in 5G Wireless IC Technology: Optical Front Haul Transport – Raza Khan  Senior Market Manager-Wireless Products, Signal Integrity Products Group, Semtech Corporation
IC technology innovation will form an important aspect to enable the 5G applications of the future. We discuss how such innovations are being enabled by semiconductor companies for the eco-system to adopt a 5G foundation that will lay the ground for 5.5G and 6G.
13:20 – 13:50
14:0o – 14:30 Telecom Infra Project  – Open Optical and Packet Transport (TIP OOPT) : MANTRA Introduction – Speaker tbc, Meta Inc.
With increasing interest from MNOs/CSPs around converged IPoDWDM transport solutions, the MANTRA subgroup aims to define an end-to-end reference network architecture that is conducive to disaggregation. This also will align with the initiatives of MUST, a sister subgroup focused on accelerating the adoption of standard interfaces and data models for automating the management of complex Optical and IP networks.
14:40 – 15:10 PAM4 SR and AOC solution in HPC and data center – Yung Son, CTO and CMO, Optomind
Optomind’s advanced optical engine technology has enabled PAM4 112Gbps for QSFP112 and OSFP SR module and AOC using advance DSP as well as 56Gbps for QSFP56 and QSFP56-DD AOC using analog CDR to meet all the requirements including high performance, lowest power, and shortest latency. We achieved volume manufacturing with exceptionally high productivity and ultralow cost procurement.
Our innovative design implemented a self-alignment between the optical device and optical fiber without any high precision vision assembly machine that enhances productivity and reduces huge manufacturing cost.
Our PAM4 AOC is the best-in-class product, which is a key breakthrough in applications for higher performance computing (HPC) and advanced cloud data center including artificial intelligence and machine learning.
15:20 – 15:50 Connectivity to You: The Importance of Quality and Reliability for Outside Plant Components, and the Role of Photonic Integration therein. – Erik Pennings, Business Development Director, ENSURE
Our goal is to get high-speed premium connectivity to everyone, and this centres to a good degree on the last mile, independent of whether this is to the home, business, datacentre, or cell site. The last mile will be increasingly fiber-based as well as passive, and given that the outside (access) plant is where most of the cost is, it is critical that passive components used here are of the highest quality and ultra-reliable. In this presentation it will be shown how ENSURE realised this, via their commitment to vertical integration, investing in the best premium equipment, and deploying photonic integration.
16: 00 – 16:30 Photonics based AI-service, which includes remote access to CogniFiber Aurora: a trainable classifier that operates at 100 million tasks/sec – Prof. Zeev Zalevsky, Cognifiber
We will describe the background, the need, the motivation and the IP, as well as the advantages of “pure-photonic computing” over other existing architectures and technologies

Wednesday 21st September
10:30 – 13:00 EPIC TechWatch at ECOC
10:30 – 10:45 Welcome and introduction by EPIC
10:45 – 12:30 Presentations:
Advanced Photonics Integrated Packaging Solutions Enabling the Next Generation Optical Connectivity – Carlos Viana, CEO at ICON Photonics
Photonics Packaging in Datacenter Focused Applications – Giorgio Cazzaniga, Director of Product Management by Jabil
Advanced Material Solutions for Packaged Optoelectronic Devices – Luca Mauri, Head of the Getters & Dispensers Development Laboratory at SAES Group
PHABULOuS – Fabrication Technologies for Free-form Optics – Ton Offermans, Technical Coordinator at PHABULOuS Pilot Line / CSEM
JePPIX: Scaling up InP PIC Production – Kevin Williams, Professor and Chair of the Photonic Integration research group at TU Eindhoven / JePPIX
PDKs of the Future: Enabling a Modular Design Ecosystem – Pierre Wahl, Co-founder & Global Sales Director at Luceda Photonics
Photonic Integration Based Devices for Tunable and Next Generation Networks Speaker – Francisco Rodrigues, CEO at PICadvanced
12:30 – 13:00 Networking
13:10 – 13:40 112Gbps-PAM4 connectivity – different solutions for all applications – David Binder, Business Development Manager, Data Networking, Yamaichi Electronics
The market demands 112Gbps-PAM4 connectivity for pluggable modules. Yamaichi Electronics offers 112Gbps-PAM4 for: SFP, DSFP, NGSFP-DD, OSFP, QSFP, QSFP-DD, CFP and more. We have also available our modular mezzanine connector and our high-speed jumper cable interconnect product.

  • SFP and DSFP up to 112Gbps-PAM4 per diff. pair
  • NGSFP-DD the next generation small form factor pluggable with double density
  • QSFP and QSFP-DD host connector up to 112G-PAM4 per diff. pair
  • The latest development in CFP2 form factors
  • 112Gbps-PAM4 Mezzanine Connectors – YTM Series with highest density.
  • 112Gbps-PAM4 high-speed jumper cable interconnect product with stable data transmission

Product Focus speakers