Fiber optics is a transmission technique that uses electrical signals to modulate a light source and thereby produce an optical signal proportional to the electrical signal. These optical signals contain information that is transmitted via a glass waveguide to a light-sensitive receiver. Fiber optics has a distinct advantage over copper networks for some applications. The objective of this book is to explore monomode, as opposed to multimode, applications of fiber optics to local area networks (LANs), which have become a rather important aspect of this technology because of the ever-increasing growth of LANs. Monomode fiber optics requires the use of coherent light sources such as laser diodes, YAGs, and HeNe lasers, to name just a few. It has some distinct advantages over multimode that this text will investigate in a cursory manner. (The author's previous book on multimode fiber optics, Fiber Optic Design and Applications, published by Reston, would be helpful but not necessary to aug ment this text.) Monomode (or single-mode) fiber optics is the present direction of the state of-the-art because of its superior performance. Since a few problems existed that limited the growth of monomode technology at the time this book was being written, several sections of the text will be devoted to examining the shortcom ings as well as the performance advantages of this technology.

This is the second edition of this book, giving an introduction to the fundamentals, problems and techniques of design and utilisation of optical fibre systems. All the chapters have been updated and many have been extended with extra sections including recent developments. In addition, three new chapters have been incorporated.

Since the technology has moved strongly into a number of different areas a textbook of this sort could be used by a wide variety of academic departments including physics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, aerospace engineering and bioengineering. To make the second edition as widely appealing as possible a series of significant upgrades were made. 1. The book is structured to support a variety of academic programs and it can also be used as a general reference by practicing engineers and scientists. 2. The introductory chapter has been revised to outline the new content of the second edition and provide a overview of the current status of fiber optic sensor technology. 3. A new, extensive chapter has been added covering fiber optic grating sensor technology and its application to aerospace, civil structures, oil and gas and power generating applications. 4. A second new chapter has been added on the emerging field of biomedical fiber optic sensors. This is one of the most rapidly growing fields of use for fiber optic sensors and with rising health costs and medical advances promises to be an important area for many years to come.

This book provides a useful introduction to Morse Theory. Coverage focuses on applications and includes topics such as Morse-Smale flows, min-max theory, moment maps and equivariant cohomology, and complex Morse theory.

SPIE Milestones are collections of seminal papers from the world literature covering important discoveries and developments in optics and photonics.