This research- and application-oriented book covers main topical areas of optical fibers. The selection of the chapters is weighted on technological and application-specific topics, very much a reflection of where research is heading to and what researchers are looking for. Chapters are arranged in a user-friendly format essentially self-contained and with extensive cross-references. They are organized in the following sections: - Optical Fiber Communication | Editors: Ming-Jun Li and Chao Lu - Solitons and Nonlinear Waves in Optical Fibers | Editor: Boris A. Malomed - Optical Fiber Fabrication | Editor: Hairul Azhar Bin Abdul Rashid - Active Optical Fibers | Editor: Kyunghwan Oh - Special Optical Fibers | Editors: Perry Shum and Zhilin Xu - Optical Fiber Measurement | Editor: Jianzhong Zhang - Optical Fiber Devices | Editors: John Canning and Tuan Guo - Optical Fiber Device Measurement | Editor: Yanhua Luo - Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing | Editor: Yosuke Mizuno - Optical Fiber Sensors for Industrial Applications | Editor: Tong Sun OBE - Polymer Optical Fiber Sensing | Editor: Ginu Rajan - Photonic Crystal Fiber Sensing | Editor: D. N. Wang - Optical Fiber Microfluidic Sensors | Editor: Yuan Gong

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Within the past few decades, information technologies have been evolving at a tremendous rate, causing profound changes to our world and our ways of life. In particular, fiber optics has been playing an increasingly crucial role within the telecommunication revolution. Not only most long-distance links are fiber based, but optical fibers are increasingly approaching the individual end users, providing wide bandwidth links to support all kinds of data-intensive applications such as video, voice, and data services. As an engineering discipline, fiber optics is both fascinating and challenging. Fiber optics is an area that incorporates elements from a wide range of techno- gies including optics, microelectronics, quantum electronics, semiconductors, and networking. As a result of rapid changes in almost all of these areas, fiber optics is a fast evolving field. Therefore, the need for up-to-date texts that address this growing field from an interdisciplinary perspective persists. This book presents an overview of fiber optics from a practical, engineering perspective. Therefore, in addition to topics such as lasers, detectors, and optical fibers, several topics related to electronic circuits that generate, detect, and process the optical signals are covered. In other words, this book attempts to present fiber optics not so much in terms of a field of “optics” but more from the perspective of an engineering field within “optoelectronics.

Polymer Optical Fibres: Fibre Types, Materials, Fabrication, Characterization, and Applications explores polymer optical fibers, specifically their materials, fabrication, characterization, measurement techniques, and applications. Optical effects, including light propagation, degrading effects of attenuation, scattering, and dispersion, are explained. Other important parameters like mechanical strength, operating temperatures, and processability are also described. Polymer optical fibers (POF) have a number of advantages over glass fibers, such as low cost, flexibility, low weight, electromagnetic immunity, good bandwidth, simple installation, and mechanical stability. - Provides systematic and comprehensive coverage of materials, fabrication, properties, measurement techniques, and applications of POF - Focuses on industry needs in communication, illumination and sensors, the automotive industry, and medical and biotechnology - Features input from leading experts in POF technology, with experience spanning optoelectronics, polymer, and textiles - Explains optical effects, including light propagation, degrading effects of attenuation, scattering, and dispersion

Hervorragender Überblick über die Verwendung von Kunststoffen in der Photonik, speziell in der Datenübertragung. Der Leser erfährt, wie die photonischen Eigenschaften von Polymeren mit ihrer Struktur zusammenhängen und wie POF für den Einsatz in optischen Netzwerken optimiert werden können. Im ersten Teil des Buches werden typische Fasern in Hinblick auf Materialklassen und Ausbreitungsmoden vorgestellt. Optische Eigenschaften wie Bandbreite und Leitungsverluste werden diskutiert, ebenso Ausbreitungscharakteristika und deren Einfluss auf die Leistungsmerkmale der Fasern. Im zweiten Teil werden unterschiedliche Methoden der Herstellungs und Charakterisierung präsentiert. Mit Bezug zu den technischen Anforderungen der optischen Kommunikation konzentriert sich das letzte Kapitel auf die Vorteile und Einsatzmöglichkeiten von polymeren optischen Fasern.

This book is a compilation of works presenting recent advances and progress in optical fiber technology related to the next generation optical communication, system and network, sensor, laser, measurement, characterization and devices. It contains five sections including optical fiber communication systems and networks, plastic optical fibers technologies, fiber optic sensors, fiber lasers and fiber measurement techniques and fiber optic devices on silicon chip. Each chapter in this book is a contribution from a group of academicians and scientists from a prominent university or research center, involved in cutting edge research in the field of photonics. This compendium is an invaluable reference for researchers and practitioners working in academic institutions as well as industries.