ABSTRACT
Over the last 30 years or so, much effort has been devoted to advancing the theory and practice of optical waveguides. This has been mainly driven by the widespread deployment of optical fibre communication systems where system performance has been dramatically improved over the last three decades. In addition to the optical fibres themselves, a number of optical components, such as diode lasers, couplers and external modulators, are formed on optical waveguide structures and their development has demanded a thorough understanding of waveguide theory. On a smaller scale, and particularly since the early 1980s, there has been a growing research programme on optical sensor technology which has also provided a stimulus for the development of new types of waveguide devices and the associated theoretical models.
