Understanding optical communications

the long version

Optical fibre's low cost, accuracy and enormous capacity has revolutionized wide area communications, 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. 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.