Propagation in optical fibres

The use of optical fibres can be divided into two distinct applications. The first is primarily concerned with the transfer of optical power from a source to a receiver; the fibre parameters are chosen to maximize this function. The second application is concerned with the transfer of information and includes telecommunications and sensing. Here the received power is only important in so far as the detector needs sufficient power to operate correctly; the parameters are chosen to preserve the information content of the original signal during the transmission process. Applications for monomode and multimode fluoride fibres are discussed in Chapter 10.