Customer Reviews

Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers: Fundamentals and Technology (Optics and Photonics)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Evaluating a book often is strongly dependent on the level of expertise and experience of the reviewer, especially in a new field like this. Speaking as one who has been in other areas of science and technology for decades but who has been recently trying to learn this new subject, it is safe to say that both Desurvire's and Becker's book have merit and they complement each other. I found Becker's book much easier reading and a pleasant respite from Desurvire's sometimes incredible density (did he really write that whole thing by himself?), but there are portions of several chapters in Desurvire that are enlightening and reasonably clear even to a novice. The technology of optical amplifiers is probably still maturing and as time goes on new texts on optical amplifiers will be written and they will draw on and improve on these two books both in content and style but for the present these two appear to be necessary for workers in the field. If you are beginner, you might want to start with Becker.

This book is full of practical examples. With respect to ED's book this book is far more practical and has fewer errors. One thing to note on the arguemnt on EDFA proprierty/discovery. The real contributors to the art & science rarely published papers. They designed, built and deployyed the earliest devices and acihieved more understanding of most "paper" writers. Olsen, Becker, and Simpson wrote some of the early papers, but now all hold high positions in innovative srtartups - Becker, VP @ Corvis; Olsen, founder, CTO @ Cenix; Simpson, Key scientist at Ciena. This innovative start up mentality is seen throughout the book. PS: most of the models introduced in ED's book have been subseuently improved and modified (e.g. average inversion model.) I am waiting for some one to write an up to date review of EDFA modeling. Of course my bias would be that the author whould have actually sold/deployeed what he had modeled.

This is to comment on the August 2 review from the reader of San Francisco. First the reviewer states that Becker, Olsson, and Simpson invented the EDFA. How does he know that ? He is completely forgetting the role of Southampton University. Second he stated that Desurvire was a minor contributor paying only attention to the noise figure. Desurvire is very well known and respected in the international scientific community for his great work on EDFAs. Desurvire received the 1998 Benjamin Franklin Medal in engineering for this work. Moreover considering that the noise figure is a minor problem is totally misunderstanding the EDFA itself. Knowing the noise figure is essential for any design of any transmission system, if you do not know it precisely you do not know what you are actually doing. Note that Haus had been invited at OFC'99 and OAA'2000 to discuss only on the noise figure of optical amplifiers, he referred many time to Desurvire's book. By the way the model that is included in the book of Becker et al. is based on the work of Desurvire and Giles (another researcher who did great works on EDFAs). The main point of a start-up is to create new thing, a book going into the heart of a component such as EDFA is therefore essential in this environment. Reading a book discussing only about the applications is fine but only to people who want to have only a general opinion about the component. The chapter on the application of EDFAs in the Desurvire book was published in 1994: lets hope that Desurvire publish soon an updated edition. Finally before putting on the web such statement it is better to check the information first.

The book covers the most issue of EDFA, from components used in EDFA to optical system, even simulation software (I have used the software, but it is not easy to learn and not flexible for EDFA design). It seems to me, the authors have deep experienced working background in this field. There are a lot of practical examples. It is a very good reference book to my work (optical fiber system engineer). The authors give a brief and clear theoretical description, just to reminder your knowledge. It is toll; I like this style and would like to recommend it as the best book.

This book is ok. It's a nice compliment to Desurvire's book to fill in the blanks left by Desurvire. It's a little easier to read and a bit better organized and certainly less dense. It gives a decent overview and lists the really important aspects of the design. It includes a fairly uninformative section on codoped fibers. It reminds me of Koechner's Solid State Laser engineering but less complete. The software is useless except maybe to beginning students. For those comparing it to Desurvire's book, it's for the quick and dirty reference. If you are doing research into novel fibers amplifiers this isn't the book for you. However, if you are a designer of commercial amplifiers it's much more convenient and concise than Desurvire. And BTW who CARES who invented the damn thing anyway. All that matters is that none of you dopes did. So shut your mouth.

As the author of " EDFAs : principles and applications", I have been dismayed by a courageous anonymous statement "Way better than Desurvire's tome", recently posted under the form of a review of the Becker-Olsson-Simpson book. My goal is not to review the book, which I find to be an excellent introduction to the field. It is to respond to some statements made by the critic, which have little to do with facts and history. Concerning first the "invention" of the EDFA, it is wiser to leave the debate to international awards committees and foundations, and to stay away from outsiders' gossips. Addressing the issue of co-authorship is much easier. During the so-called EDFA-pioneering period,1987-90, Bell Labs has released 52 papers (*). Accordingly, 52 investigators have been " first authors ", with the following breakdown :

Desurvire (24), Giles (11), Zyskind (7), Olsson (4), Simpson (2) and Becker (2).

In terms of global authorship, combining first and co-author contributions, the numbers are :

Desurvire (38), Simpson (38), Giles (22), Zyskind (18), Becker (14) and Olsson (13).

The high number of publications for J.R.Simpson reflects the fact that he has co-authored 29 papers with myself as first author, including the very first one. I leave it to analysts to conclude from the above data as to wherever the action was happening during these important years. The second folder of the critic is about noise figure definition and development. Here again, the critic exhibits ignorance. The work from the Bell labs core team, as sketched from the above statistics, rapidly led to an optimal EDFA design, which was transferred to the submarine-cable area, for a success that is over-documented. Actually, the floppy-disk EDFA model offered in the B-O-S book is based upon the theory developped by C.R.Giles and myself. It is also extensively used in amplifier simulation software by suppliers and compagnies worlwide, as being generic and accurate. The critic gives me credit for the noise figure definition, which has since become a standard. It is brought to his kind attention that the issue, after all these years yet, is important enough to mobilize top MIT experts with possible consequences for standards in the technology. As a conclusion to help re-orienting the critic's future, I will say first that you cannot create a start-up from the integration of any book's knowledge (no matter how good, accurate and applied, no matter how many books), because this is not what is expected from start-up " entrepreneurs ". Second, actual expertise in optical communications requires sweat mind work, not sweet talking at job-interview time. Finally, short of experience and appreciation, please keep respect to the generations of enginers at Bell Labs, and elsewhere in Europe and Japan, who paved the way to the Internet technology with their combined touch and visions.---- (*) source : " H.R.D.Sunak, Bibliography on EDFAs : 19987 to 1990, EDFA consultants publisher, Kingston, RI, 1991 ", p.163.

most up-to-date, fewest mistakes (by far), clearest, most-well-thought-out-treatment

This is to comment on the August 2 review from the reader of San Francisco. First the reviewer states that Becker, Olsson, and Simpson invented the EDFA. How does he know that ? He is completely forgetting the role of Southampton University. Second he stated that Desurvire was a minor contributor paying only attention to the noise figure. Desurvire is very well known and respected in the international scientific community for his great work on EDFAs. Desurvire received the 1998 Benjamin Franklin Medal in engineering for this work. Moreover considering that the noise figure is a minor problem is totally misunderstanding the EDFA itself. Knowing the noise figure is essential for any design of any transmission system, if you do not know it precisely you do not know what you are actually doing. Note that Haus had been invited at OFC'99 and OAA'2000 to discuss only on the noise figure of optical amplifiers, he referred many time to Desurvire's book. By the way the model that is included in the book of Becker et al. is based on the work of Desurvire and Giles (another researcher who did great works on EDFAs). The main point of a start-up is to create new thing, a book going into the heart of a component such as EDFA is therefore essential in this environment. Reading a book discussing only about the applications is fine but only to people who want to have only a general opinion about the component. The chapter on the application of EDFAs in the Desurvire book was published in 1994: lets hope that Desurvire publish soon an updated edition. Finally before putting on the web such statement it is better to check the information first.

I am interested in reviews about the book but i am perplexed by the furore as penned in the previous e-mails, having just written that however i would just like to re-iteriate the point made previously that a huge amount of in-fibre technology development and research work was done at the University of Southampton. NB I haven't used the book yet so ignore the star rating

Becker, Olsson and Simpson pratiaclly invented the EDFA at Bell Labs. Yes, in the first published paper Becker and Simpson, they incluced Desurvire as a co-author. Subsequently, however, Desurvire worried about how deifine noise figure, while Becker, Simpson, and Olsson (later to become VP of Lucent) really figured out how to make these things do useful work. If you want to learn about statistical ensembeles, etc, read Desurvire. If you want to start up a optical networking system company, read Becker, et al.