Fiber Optic Communications

This book highlights the fundamental principles of optical fiber technology required for understanding modern high-capacity lightwave telecom networks. Such networks have become an indispensable part of society with applications ranging from simple web browsing to critical healthcare diagnosis and cloud computing. Since users expect these services to always be available, careful engineering is required in all technologies ranging from component development to network operations. To achieve this understanding, this book first presents a comprehensive treatment of various optical fiber structures and diverse photonic components used in optical fiber networks. Following this discussion are the fundamental design principles of digital and analog optical fiber transmission links. The concluding chapters present the architectures and performance characteristics of optical networks.

Chapter 1 – Overview of fiber optic telecommunications

Chapter 2 – Optical fiber structures and light guiding principles

Chapter 3 – Optical signal attenuation and dispersion

Chapter 4 – Light sources for telecommunications

Chapter 5 – Launching and coupling of optical power

Chapter 6 – Optical signal detection

Chapter 7 – Characteristics of optical receivers

Chapter 8 – Basic digital link designs

Chapter 9 – Analog fiber optic systems

Chapter 10 – Passive and active components for WDM

Chapter 11 – Amplifiers for optical signals

Chapter 12 – Nonlinear processes in optical fibers

Chapter 13 – Telecom networks

Gerd Keiser is Research Professor at Boston University and Professor and Consultant at PhotonicsComm Solutions, a firm specializing in education and consulting for the optical communications and biophotonics industries. Previously, he was involved with telecom technologies at Honeywell, GTE, and General Dynamics. His technical achievements at GTE earned him the prestigious Leslie Warner Award. In addition, he has served as Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering at Northeastern University, Boston University, and Tufts University and was Industrial Advisor to the Wentworth Institute of Technology. Formerly, he was Chair Professor in the Electronics Engineering Department at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. He also was Visiting Researcher at the Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore and at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE, Fellow of OSA and SPIE, Associate Editor and Reviewer of several technical journals, and Author of five books. He received his B.A. and M.S. degrees in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. in Physics from Northeastern University. His professional experience and research interests are in the general areas of optical networking and biophotonics.