Optical Communications

Book excerpt: The advantages of optical communications are many: ultra-high speed, highly reliable information transmission, and cost-effective modulation and transmission links to name but a few. It is no surprise that optical fiber communications systems are now in extensive use all over the world. Along with software and microelectronics, optical communication represents a key technology of modern telecommunication systems. Optical Communications: Components and Systems provides the basic material required for advanced study in theory and applications of optical fiber and space communication systems. After a review of some fundamental background material, component-based chapters discuss all relevant passive and active optical and optoelectronic components used in point-to-point links and in networks. Systems chapters address the analysis and optimization of both incoherent and coherent systems, introduce fiber optic link design, and discuss physical limits. The authors also provide an overview of applications such as optical networks and optical free-space communications. The advanced interactive multimedia communications of today and the future rely on optical fiber and space communication techniques. Optical Communications: Components and Systems offers engineers and physicists a working reference for the selection and design of optical communication systems and provides engineering students with a valuable text that prepares them for work in this essential and rapidly growing field.