ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a mainly heuristic approach to designing fiber optic communications systems and avoid sophisticated mathematical tools and derivations of analytical results seldom used by most practicing telecommunications engineers. It focuses on the operations and performance parameters important to digital optical transmitters. The chapter provides a brief overview of the properties and important parameters that characterize optical fibers. It also focuses on the general principles of the design of a digital fiber optic link. These principles will apply to any digital communication link, regardless of its specific application. In many applications, the system designer must take into account the spectral width of the source as well as its total power output. A more speculative approach involving single-mode fibers is the use of coherent optical transmission in which a heterodyne-type detection process is used. The optical power generated by a light emitting diode must be coupled into a fiber to be useful for communication purposes.
