Welcome to the Journal of Optical Communications and Networking (JOCN) OFC 2022 Special Issue. Published over three months (January, February, and March 2023, Vol. 15, Nos. 1–3), the special issue includes extensions of invited and top-scored optical networking papers that were presented at OFC 2022. The OFC Technical Committee worked with the JOCN Editor-in-Chief to determine which authors were eligible to participate in this issue. The authors were required to include significant new material as compared to their OFC paper. All papers underwent the usual JOCN peer-review process. All of the authors, reviewers, editors, and JOCN staff are acknowledged for their diligence in producing this high-quality special issue.

This JOCN special issue includes an excellent invited tutorial that covers next-generation optical access networks enhanced by machine learning. As the complexity of access networks is increasing, driven by more diverse and immersive services, this tutorial discussed the challenges and promises of machine learning methods for intelligent network management.

There are a number of other papers addressing access and metro networks, ranging from using coherent optics for point-to-point (P2P) and point-to-multipoint access (P2MP) systems, over enabling dynamic resource allocation through reconfigurable photonics, to programmability via vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL)-based sliceable bandwidth-variable transponders. A related popular theme is on enhancing passive optical network (PON) architectures, and this special issue includes papers on digital signal-processing techniques for next-generation PON, as well as on the virtualization of PON to provision and accommodate a wider range of services.

Artificial intelligence and (AI) and machine learning (ML) in optical networks is another major theme, and several papers apply them for telemetry and security applications in programmable data planes of metro networks, as well as to estimate the quality of transmission (QoT) of lightpaths. Another paper discusses intelligent routing methods for traffic grooming in multi-layer X-Haul networks.

A noteworthy paper presents a real-time transponder architecture for baud-rate switching to support the reconfigurability in elastic optical networks. Finally, we would like to highlight a paper that analyzes the impact of using optical switching for high-performance disaggregated computing systems. It states the benefits of the technology and proposes composable architectures enabled by this advantage.

Overall, the special issue provides a good mix of covering current areas of interest in optical networking while still exploring new directions. We look forward to what OFC 2023 will bring.