Introduction

Abstract

Although the subject of this book is optical communications, the field encompasses many different aspects of electronic engineering: electromagnetic theory, semiconductor physics, communications theory, signal processing, and electronic design. In a book of this length, we could not hope to cover every one of these different fields in detail. Instead, we will deal with some aspects in-depth, and cover others by more general discussion. Before we start our studies, let us see how modern-day optical communications came about.