Customer Reviews

Understanding Optical Communications

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This book is an overlooked gem in the optical communications space.It's not quite as technical as Ramaswami and Sivarajan's "Optical Networks" but very understandable and complete. It's an excellent way for a beginner, even someone who already knows non-optical communications, to begin learning about the optical communications space.

It covers all the optical components, including fiber characteristics, LEDs, lasers, photodetectors, optical amplifiers and more. If you're looking for a good introduction to optical communications, this is it.

The only negative is one common to all books on optical communications. The book was actually written in 1998 and earlier. While much hasn't changed, much has. So take the knowledge that's here but continue studying.

This book is an excellent introduction to optical networking for applications engineers (AE's) and systems engineers (SE's) who need to get up speed on optics but don't need to wade through 150+ pages of graduate level mathematics. Dutton is required reading at several optical startups that are re-treading internetworking SE's into optics guys. The downside is the publication date--quite a while in networking. Overall analysis: best introduction for technical guys that is currently available.

If you've ever wondered how optical communications works, from the nature and physics of fiber optics to digital wavelength mutliplexing, this is the book to have.

I like this book a lot and highly recommended to general readers. It is well written and up-to-date. It is not written for engineers, rather for investors and business executives. If you are a reader of Lightwave magazine, this book comes very handy and extremely helpful. The cover was not as testfully designed as Cisco's books. Well, what can you expect for IBM people?