Customer Reviews

Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers, Device and System Developments

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This book is clearly a natural complement to the EDFA "Bible" written by E. Desurvire. The four top rate scientists and authors bring together an unparallel understanding of the subject through their experience and divers of points of view. From pure physics, R&D to systems applications, the amazing wealth of information provides an up-to-date and comprehensive coverage of rare earth doped fiber amplifiers. I recommend this book as an indispensable Reference for both professionals and students involved in the studies of optical fiber amplifiers

This book covers almost all the aspects in designing optical transmission system. Considering the fact that optical amplifiers are indispensable in modern optical transmission systems, it is with reason that the book covers not only EDFA but also FEC, Q factor measurement and even Raman. Compared to its predecessor, it is more engineering oriented. In addition to its very useful appendices, description on actual systems, terrestrial and submarine, are very informative and inclusive. In particular, chapter 2 gives a very good insight into the nature of optical noise. Therefore, I would like to recommend it to every engineer in optical communication field.

Since the so-called EDFA " Bible " was released in 1994, most EDFA experts - or late converts, jumped in the cash-making bandwagon of lure and deceit. Ganged-up with scientifically illiterate marketers/analysts, some of them forgone their science upbringings and ethics to promise to gullible investors the moon of "infinite bandwidth" in $/s/GHz units. But in academia and industry, more serious people developed the true EDFA 'science'. Over the past ten years, their work overflowed the field with thousands of technical journal/conference papers. Given such a proliferation (also including a fair share of hype), those familiar with the surviving " Bible " have been craving all this time for an updated reference. This book release not only comes timely, but also overwhelms chicken-soup chapter books published years ago. As the authoritative foreword states, Desurvire wisely prevailed upon his world-class expert colleagues to put altogether such this incredible 'tour de force'(again). Their thorough review should save days and months of desperate search for answers and background materials. This includes many difficult calculations and system-optimization issues which all developers struggle with. Actually, some people may resent that their well-garded little secrets are now made available to all! This book is an information goldmine every page you may look at. Like the first one, it is the kind of scientific reference that will never be outdated nor proved wrong, no matter future developments. Five stars and A^+!..

Since its 1994 publication, Desurvire's "Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers: Principles and Applications" has been *the* standard reference book on the physics and system applications of optical amplifiers. As many scientists and engineers will attest, "Principles" is unchallenged in its authoritative coverage of key topics, including modeling and characteristics of EDFAs, and quantum and semiclassical treatments of noise in amplified systems. Although "Principles" remains a timeless classic, the intervening eight years have seen relentless progress in optical amplifiers and their applications, necessitating a companion volume.

The new volume, "Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers: Device and System Developments", is divided into two major parts, describing fundamentals and applications, respectively.

Chapters 1-4 deal with a number of important fundamental issues. The serious reader will appreciate the thoroughness and rigor with which all of these topics are treated. Space permits me to describe only a few highlights.

In Chapter 2, Desurvire provides a deep, fascinating treatment of noise in optical amplifiers, which should be read by anyone seeking an understanding beyond the semiclassical description. We learn that the dominant noise in amplified direct-detection systems arises from fluctuations in stimulated emission and not, as widely thought, from signal-spontaneous beat noise. Desurvire succeeds in making photon-number and coherent states understandable to engineers not trained in quantum field theory. This chapter ends with an in-depth discussion of amplifier noise figures, uniting the microwave and optical regimes along lines proposed recently by H. Haus.

Chapter 3 presents the first complete description of information capacity limits in optical transmission systems in both semiclassical and quantum regimes. Comprehending these fundamental limits requires one to combine an understanding of the physical characteristics of noise and nonlinearity with the tools of Shannon's information theory. Desurvire is one of very few individuals capable of synthesizing these disparate topics and presenting them in a coherent form. This chapter presents an original unified quantum model for noise and nonlinearity that is certain to inspire other research in this field.

In Chapters 5-8, we are given a comprehensive survey of recent progress in amplifier and system technologies for terrestrial and undersea applications. Here, Desurvire has teamed with three authoritative coauthors, who wrote three of the four chapters. Chapters 5-8 cover these topics in systematic, detailed fashion. We learn about the latest developments that open up new fiber amplification windows, including lumped and distributed Raman amplifiers and various doped-fiber alternatives to the erbium-doped silica workhorse. Since the 1994 publication of "Principles", extended system reach has made fiber nonlinearity and chromatic dispersion compensation into topics of enormous importance, and these are discussed amply here. In a very real sense, the story of fiber system research is the story of "hero" experiments, and here we are treated to a fastidious accounting of every summit that researchers have climbed.

If you are a serious scientist, engineer or student working on optical communications, you will find this book essential reading for years to come.

The present state of the telecom industry would indicate that all the EDFAs needed for the next 3-5 years have already been built and are sitting on shelves in warehouses. This is fortunate. By the time the next generation of EDFAs are built this version of Desurvie's book should be as outdated as the first version was during the telecom "boom" of 1998-2000.

This book does show some improvement over the first due to the inclusion of views of the other contributors. In the end, however, the pedantic style of Desurvie shines through, blurring any hope of a clear exposition.

It is unfortunate that (with the notable exception of Becker, Olson, and Simpson) the brightest stars in this field have not contributed to the literature via review volumes. The addition of another hefty tome by Desuivre only succeeds in making a fairly straightforward subject opaque.