Introduction to Optical Communication

Abstract

In the 21^st century, when people talk about optical communication, they are usually referring to optical fibers. In fact, optical communication has been used for thousands of years although optical physics were not understood in ancient times. In this chapter, we will first introduce the historical use of optical communication, followed by the description of emerging modern optical-fiber communication. To understand the significant progress of optical communication in the late 20th century, the fundamentals of light need to be understood. Therefore, we will discuss the details of optical physics in Section 1.3 and the light-matter interaction in Sections 1.4. The optical properties of transparent materials that are commonly encountered in optics will be introduced in Section 1.5, followed by the explanation of basic physics of optical fiber in Section 1.6. A brief description of modern optical communication system and optical components for communication is given in Section 1.7.