Advances in Optical Fibre Communications

The basic concept of an optical fibre communication system, in which information is transmitted in the form of an optical signal guided along a glass fibre, was first proposed by Kao and Hockham of Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in 1966. Since that date there has been considerable work, world-wide, on the development of low-loss optical fibre, semiconductor light sources and detectors, which has culminated in recent years in the large scale implementation of digital optical fibre systems in the telecommunication networks of several countries–principally the UK, USA and Japan.