Digest of the Symposium on Optical Fiber Measurements sponsored by NIST and the IEEE. Includes 44 papers, with strong international participation. The majority of papers are on dispersion, components and nonlinear optics. Dispersion is the largest category, containing 2 sessions of polarization-mode dispersion, a session of chromatic dispersion and a session for group-delay measurements on fiber Bragg gratings. Component papers include grating metrology as well as receiver and amplifier characterization. Nonlinear measurements fill 2 sessions with measurements of nonlinear coefficient and effective area. A full session of papers relates to novel (engineered) fibers).

Applied Photometry, Radiometry, and Measurements of Optical Losses reviews and analyzes physical concepts of radiation transfer, providing quantitative foundation for the means of measurements of optical losses, which affect propagation and distribution of light waves in various media and in diverse optical systems and components. The comprehensive analysis of advanced methodologies for low-loss detection is outlined in comparison with the classic photometric and radiometric observations, having a broad range of techniques examined and summarized: from interferometric and calorimetric, resonator and polarization, phase-shift and ring-down decay, wavelength and frequency modulation to pulse separation and resonant, acousto-optic and emissive - subsequently compared to direct and balancing methods for studying free-space and polarization optics, fibers and waveguides. The material is focused on applying optical methods and procedures for evaluation of transparent, reflecting, scattering, absorbing, and aggregated objects, and for determination of power and energy parameters of radiation and color properties of light.

Fibre Optics has gained prominence in: telecommunications, data transmission and distribution, cable television networks, sensing and control, light probing and instrumentation. The 1990's shows an increased expansion of optical fibre networks which respond to the rapid growth on a world scale of long distance trunk lines combined with a family of emerging optical based services in which fibre-to-the-home will have the greatest impact. There is already evidence that optical communications are moving toward higher bit-rates, wavelength transparency and irrelevance of signal formats. The rate of change in fibre optics and the emergence of new services will be a mere consequence of economics. The actual increasing of cost and the demand for high-date-rates or large bandwidth per transmission channels, and the lack of available space in the congested conduits in urban areas, strongly favour the technological change to fibre optics. The recognised advantages of fibre optic technologies and the unchallenged potential to respond to future needs requires the inclusion of fibre optics networking into new installations. Concomitantly, current progress in the field of optical fibres (optical fibre amplifiers, optical fibre switching, WDM, fibre gratings, etc.) unfold major technical advances and greater flexibility in the designs and engineering of networks, optical fibre components and instrumentation. The explosion of growth in fibre sensors, fibre probes and the myriad of fibre based components shows that we are only using a fraction of optical fibre potential.