Fiber-Optic Systems Hardcover - 2002

First line

Optical fiber is the transmission medium of choice for terrestrial telecommunications.

From the rear cover

A text that sheds much-needed light on one of telecommunication's brightest technologies

Fiber optics has assumed a dominant place among the available technologies to slake the ever-growing worldwide thirst for bandwidth. As miles and miles of optical fiber cable is being buried underground and under the sea, the demand for those capable of designing and installing fiber-optic systems has also grown. This book gathers all the essential information needed by the network architects, engineers, and craftspeople who plan, install, and maintain fiber-optic systems.

Requiring only a basic math and physics background, Fiber-Optic Systems for Telecommunications acts as both a tutorial and practical reference on both theory and practical applications.

It discusses:
* Loss-limited and dispersion-limited fiber links
* Optical networking
* Availability and survivability of fiber-optic networks
* Dense wave-division multiplexing (DWDM)
* Light transmission impairments, including Brillioun scattering, Raman scattering, four-wave mixing, polarization mode dispersion (PMD), and other non-linear effects
* Hybrid fiber-coax CATV networks
* Fiber-optic link budgets and tradeoffs

The text stresses design methods for achieving advanced performance on fiber-optic systems inside cost-effective limits. At the same time, a good dose of practical application is provided to the reader. For example, there is an extensive section on the application of an OTDR (optical time domain reflectometer) for performance measurement and troubleshooting of optical systems.

The book examines the maximum capacity of high-quality single-mode fiber. Here, the ITU has made some major contributions in this arena in their G.650 and G.950 recommendations. The author describes the ITU "grid" or wavelength assignment chart for the 1550 nm band. How close can these light carriers be placed before serious performance degradation occurs? He describes ultimate bit rate capacity in this band alone in the hundred of terabits reaching a final bit rate capacity possibly in the low thousands of terabits per second. The author communicates the excitement of such research in his writing.