Fibre Optics has gained prominence in: telecommunications, data transmission and distribution, cable television networks, sensing and control, light probing and instrumentation. The 1990's shows an increased expansion of optical fibre networks which respond to the rapid growth on a world scale of long distance trunk lines combined with a family of emerging optical based services in which fibre-to-the-home will have the greatest impact. There is already evidence that optical communications are moving toward higher bit-rates, wavelength transparency and irrelevance of signal formats. The rate of change in fibre optics and the emergence of new services will be a mere consequence of economics. The actual increasing of cost and the demand for high-date-rates or large bandwidth per transmission channels, and the lack of available space in the congested conduits in urban areas, strongly favour the technological change to fibre optics. The recognised advantages of fibre optic technologies and the unchallenged potential to respond to future needs requires the inclusion of fibre optics networking into new installations. Concomitantly, current progress in the field of optical fibres (optical fibre amplifiers, optical fibre switching, WDM, fibre gratings, etc.) unfold major technical advances and greater flexibility in the designs and engineering of networks, optical fibre components and instrumentation. The explosion of growth in fibre sensors, fibre probes and the myriad of fibre based components shows that we are only using a fraction of optical fibre potential.

The book explores various aspects of existing and emerging fiber and waveguide optics sensing and imaging technologies including recent advances in nanobiophotonics. The focus is both on fundamental and applied research as well as on applications in civil engineering, biomedical sciences, environment, security and defence. The book aims to provide a reference of state-of-the-art overviews covering a variety of topics on the interface of engineering and biomedical sciences.

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.

In-depth coverage of instrumentation and measurement from the Wiley Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering The Wiley Survey of Instrumentation and Measurement features 97 articles selected from the Wiley Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, the one truly indispensable reference for electrical engineers. Together, these articles provide authoritative coverage of the important topic of instrumentation and measurement. This collection also, for the first time, makes this information available to those who do not have access to the full 24-volume encyclopedia. The entire encyclopedia is available online-visit www.interscience.wiley.com/EEEE for more details. Articles are grouped under sections devoted to the major topics in instrumentation and measurement, including: * Sensors and transducers * Signal conditioning * General-purpose instrumentation and measurement * Electrical variables * Electromagnetic variables * Mechanical variables * Time, frequency, and phase * Noise and distortion * Power and energy * Instrumentation for chemistry and physics * Interferometers and spectrometers * Microscopy * Data acquisition and recording * Testing methods The articles collected here provide broad coverage of this important subject and make the Wiley Survey of Instrumentation and Measurement a vital resource for researchers and practitioners alike

The study of radiation effects has developed as a major field of materials science from the beginning, approximately 70 years ago. Its rapid development has been driven by two strong influences. The properties of the crystal defects and the materials containing them may then be studied. The types of radiation that can alter structural materials consist of neutrons, ions, electrons, gamma rays or other electromagnetic waves with different wavelengths. All of these forms of radiation have the capability to displace atoms/molecules from their lattice sites, which is the fundamental process that drives the changes in all materials. The effect of irradiation on materials is fixed in the initial event in which an energetic projectile strikes a target. The book is distributed in four sections: Ionic Materials; Biomaterials; Polymeric Materials and Metallic Materials.

This book tells you all you want to know about optical fibers: Their structure, their light-guiding mechanism, their material and manufacture, their use. It began with telephone, then came telefax and email. Today we use search engines, music downloads and internet videos, all of which require shuffling of bits and bytes by the zillions. The key to all this is the conduit: the line which is designed to carry massive amounts of data at breakneck speed. In their data carrying capacity optical fiber lines beat all other technologies (copper cable, microwave beacons, satellite links) hands down, at least in the long haul; wireless devices rely on fibers, too. Several effects tend to degrade the signal as it travels down the fiber: they are spelled out in detail. Nonlinear processes are given due consideration for a twofold reason: On the one hand they are fundamentally different from the more familiar processes in electrical cable. On the other hand, they form the basis of particularly interesting and innovative applications, provided they are understood well enough. A case in point is the use of so-called solitons, i.e. special pulses of light which have the wonderful property of being able to heal after perturbation. The book will take you from the physical basics of ray and beam optics, explain fiber structure and the functions of optical elements, and bring you to the forefront of both applications and research. The state of the art of high speed data transmission is described, and the use of fiber optic sensors in metrology is treated. The book is written in a pedagogical style so that students of both physics and electrical engineering, as well as technicians and engineers involved in optical technologies, will benefit. The new edition is largely updated and has new sections on nonlinear phenomena in fibers as well as on the latest trends in applications.