We welcome you to Photonics in Switching (PS) 2009. Photonics in Switching is a historic conference on optical switching created at the end of the 1980s. Since then, it has represented a valuable forum for the international academic community, manufacturing companies and operators representatives to share technical achievements, ideas and views on the evolution of the application of photonics to the domain of switching.

There is a steady increase in the demand for bandwidth in all segments of telecom networks due to growing number of Internet users and corporate services. Optical networks and photonic technologies can be combined to realize access solutions and scalable transport infrastructures capable of supporting high-capacity connections.

Photonics in switching addresses all research areas in which photonic technologies are applied to innovate and enhance switching capabilities of the future optical network infrastructures. This area includes integrated photonic devices, high-throughput all-optical nodes, large capacity optical systems, efficient optical network architectures. In particular, developing optical subsystems, optical processors and novel integrated circuit requires proper balancing of photonic and electronic technologies. Optical infrastructures will leverage the opportunities offered by photonics to answer the emerging needs of the next decades such as the realization of all-optical network elements, the reduction of network power consumption and device footprint by integration.