Silica Optical Fiber Technology for Devices and Components: Design, Fabrication, and International Standards

Preface

The proposal of high capacity optical communication using silica optical fiber initiated by Dr. Charles Kao in 1966 and subsequent announcement of a silica-based low-loss fiber fabrication by the Corning in 1970 stimulated intensive global research and development efforts in optical fibers and fiber optical communication. Rapidly growing optical fiber technologies successfully shifted toward commercial communication applications in the massive scale worldwide, which in turn has generated profound impacts over information technology revolution in the late 20’st centuries. The huge success and contributions in optical fiber technology in shaping the present information based society have been recognized by scientific communities to have Dr. Charles Kao nominated as a Nobel laureate in Physics 2009.

Today in 21’st century, silica optical fiber is regarded as a “de facto transmission medium” to transport high bandwidth information including voice, picture, video and data. Since the advent of internet and internet based services, demands on flexible connectivity and wide bandwidth have been soaring in recent years and optical communication systems based on optical fibers have proven that fiber optic technology is the only viable options to cope with those ever-increasing demands.

Optical fibers have successfully served their initial roles as transmission media for optical signals, providing both low attenuation and large bandwidth. However, it should be also emphasized that ...