Optical links are now to be found in short-haul industrial routes, as well as in long-haul telecommunications routes. In order to design and maintain these links, it is important to understand the operation of the individual system components, and this book provides the relevant information.

2014A-8 The complete, up-to-date technical overview of optical communications. Fibre in the WAN, MAN, local loop, campus and LAN. Up-to-the-minute coverage of Wavelength Division Multiplexing. Previews today's advanced research--tomorrow's practical applications. Over the past 15 years, optical fibre's low cost, accuracy and enormous capacity has revolutionized wide area communications--making possible the Internet as we know it. Now a second fibre revolution is underway. Advanced technologies such as Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) are adding even more capacity, and fibre is increasingly the media of choice in MANs, campuses, buildings, LANs--soon, even homes. If you need to understand the state-of-the-art in optical communications, Understanding Optical Communications is the most complete, up-to-date technical overview available. Fundamental principles and components of optical communications. Optical communications systems, interfaces and engineering challenges. FDDI, Ethernet on Fibre, ESCON, Fibre Channel, SONET/SDH and ATM. WDM: sparse and dense approaches, photonic networking, WDM for LANs and WDM standards. Fibre in the local loop, integration with HFC networks and passive optical networks. Understanding Optical Communications reviews key technical issues facing engineers as they extend fibre into new applications and markets. It presents an up-to-the-minute status report on WDM for LANs and MANs, including a rare glimpse at IBM's latest experimental systems. It points to the advanced research most likely to bear fruit: dark and spatial solitons, advanced fibres, plastic technologies, optical CDMA, TDM and packet-networks and more. Whether you're building optical systems or planning for them, this is the briefing you've been looking for.

Beginning with an overview of historical development, the electromagnetic spectrum, and optical power basics, this book offers an in-depth discussion of optic receivers, optical transmitters and amplifiers. The text discusses attenuation, transmission losses, optical sources such as semiconductor light emitting diodes, and lasers, providing several dispersion-management schemes that restore the amplified signal to its original state. Topics are discussed in a structured manner, with definitions, explanations, examples, illustrations, and informative facts. Extensive pedagogical features, such as numerical problems, review questions, multiple choice questions, and student-focussed learning objectives, are also provided. Mathematical derivations and geometrical representations are included where necessary. This text will be useful for undergraduate and graduate students of electronics, communication engineering, and optical fiber communications.

Telecommunications have underpinned social interaction and economic activity since the 19th century and have been increasingly reliant on optical fibers since their initial commercial deployment by BT in 1983. Today, mobile phone networks, data centers, and broadband services that facilitate our entertainment, commerce, and increasingly health provision are built on hidden optical fiber networks. However, recently it emerged that the fiber network is beginning to fill up, leading to the talk of a capacity crunch where the capacity still grows but struggles to keep up with the increasing demand. This book, featuring contributions by the suppliers of widely deployed simulation software and academic authors, illustrates the origins of the limited performance of an optical fiber from the engineering, physics, and information theoretic viewpoints. Solutions are then discussed by pioneers in each of the respective fields, with near-term solutions discussed by industrially based authors, and more speculative high-potential solutions discussed by leading academic groups.

A quarter century of research into deep space and near Earth optical communications This book captures a quarter century of research and development in deep space optical communications from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Additionally, it presents findings from other optical communications research groups from around the world for a full perspective. Readers are brought up to date with the latest developments in optical communications technology, as well as the state of the art in component and subsystem technologies, fundamental limitations, and approaches to develop and fully exploit new technologies. The book explores the unique requirements and technologies for deep space optical communications, including: * Technology overview; link and system design drivers * Atmospheric transmission, propagation, and reception issues * Flight and ground terminal architecture and subsystems * Future prospects and applications, including navigational tracking and light science This is the first book to specifically address deep space optical communications. With an increasing demand for data from planetary spacecraft and other sources, it is essential reading for all optical communications, telecommunications, and system engineers, as well as technical managers in the aerospace industry. It is also recommended for graduate students interested in deep space communications.

Fiber-optic communication systems have revolutionized our telecommunication infrastructures – currently, almost all telephone land-line, cellular, and internet communications must travel via some form of optical fibers. In these transmission systems, neither the phase nor frequency of the optical signal carries information – only the intensity of the signal is used. To transmit more information in a single optical carrier, the phase of the optical carrier must be explored. As a result, there is renewed interest in phase-modulated optical communications, mainly in direct-detection DPSK signals for long-haul optical communication systems. When optical amplifiers are used to maintain certain signal level among the fiber link, the system is limited by amplifier noises and fiber nonlinearities. Phase-Modulated Optical Communication Systems surveys this newly popular area, covering the following topics: - The transmitter and receiver for phase-modulated coherent lightwave systems - Method for performance analysis of phase-modulated optical signals - Direct-detection DPSK signal with fiber nonlinearities, degraded by nonlinear phase noise and intrachannel effects - Wavelength-division-multiplexed direct-detection DPSK signals - Multi-level phase-modulated optical signals, such as the four-phase DQPSK signal. Graduate students, professional engineers, and researchers will all benefit from this updated treatment of an important topic in the optical communications field.

Updated to reflect all the advances in this rapidly emerging technology, this new edition presents new material on digital communications, fiber optics and most lightwave networks. It also emphasizes the system aspects of optical communications rather than dwelling on detailed hardware device descriptions.