Optical Networks

Following the emergence of lasers and optical fibers, optical networking made its beginning in the 1970s with high-speed LANs/MANs. In the 1980s, when the bandwidth of intercity microwave links turned out to be inadequate for digital telephony, the technology for single-wavelength optical communications using SONET/SDH arrived as a saviour to replace the microwave links. However, single-wavelength links couldn't utilize the huge bandwidth (25 THz) of optical fibers, while the bandwidth demands kept soaring. This necessitated the use of wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) for concurrent transmission over multiple wavelengths, increasing the available bandwidth significantly.

Today, optical networking has become an indispensable part of telecommunication networks at all hierarchical levels. The book Optical Networks provides a graduate level presentation of optical networks, capturing the past, present and ensuing developments with a unique blend of breadth and depth. The book is organized in four parts and three appendices. Part I presents an overview and the enabling technologies in two chapters, Part II presents the single-wavelength optical networks in three chapters, while Part III deals with the various forms of WDM optical networks in four chapters. Finally, Part IV presents some selected topics in six chapters, dealing with a number of contemporary and emerging topics.

Optical Networks provides a comprehensive all-in-one text for beginning graduate as well as final-year undergraduate students, and also allows R&D engineers to quickly refresh the basics and then move on to emerging topics.

Debasish Datta, Professor, Department of Electronics and Electrical Communication, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

Professor Debasish Datta served in the faculty of Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur for over 37 years till 2017. He visited several overseas universities including Stanford University, University of California at Davis, Chonbuk National University, South Korea, and University of Malaya. He served as a Guest Editor for IEEE JSAC for the special Issue on WDM-based Network Architectures and served on the Editorial Boards of IEEE Communication Surveys and Tutorials and Elsevier Journal of Optical Switching and Networking. Currently, he is engaged in mentoring researchers in the area of optical networks as a visiting professor at various Indian universities.