Frank,
The book and table of contents look very interesting but there was a critical review of it on Amazon that should be considered.
Reviewer: Duwayne Anderson from St. Helens, Oregon March 18, 2000
I saw this book on display as I passed the SPIE booth at OFC?00 on Sunday after picking up my registration material for the show. I took the top copy from a stack of 12. By the time I finished leafing through the pages the stack was gone. They were selling like hotcakes. Scanning the book, I found plenty of equations (so I figured it must not be too superficial) and (I?m ashamed to say) the color figures particularly caught my attention. Always anxious to catch a new perspective, I put my plastic down and left the convention hall feeling pretty happy about the great new book I just purchased.
I started reading the book that evening, over dinner, and finished it four days later on the flight home from Baltimore to Portland. My earliest impressions were quickly shattered, however, as I realized less than ten pages into the book that it was not going to measure up to my earlier expectations.
One of the most prominent problems with this book is that the author seems to be continually confused regarding his audience. For example, on page 7 he plunks down Maxwell?s equations with barely an explanation, and yet several sentences later he goes into considerable detail describing what is meant by phase, frequency, and wavelength of a wave. Clearly, if you can read Maxwell?s equations without explanation the discussion about elementary attributes of waves is wholly unnecessary. On the other hand, if a person reading the book needs to be told what frequency is, then Maxwell?s equations will look like meaningless gibberish.
Another surprising problem with the book are the many technical errors and typographical mistakes. I found these to be the most troublesome, since they can lead to real confusion on some important topics for anyone who is new to the topic of WDM. Here is an example from page 117:
?Optical amplifiers require electrical or optical energy to excite (pump-up) the state of electron-hole pairs. Energy is typically provided by injecting electrical current (in SOA: Figure 8.2) or optical light in the UV range (in EDFA).?
This isn?t just a typographical error because the author repeats the mistake on page 119 where he says:
?The EDFA is stimulated by a higher optical frequency (in the UV range) laser source, known as the pump.?
Anyone familiar with EDFA optical amplifiers used in telecommunications will immediately realize that this is wrong. EDFAs are pumped at 1480 nm or 980 nm (both in the near IR). They are not pumped in the UV. In fact, the author clearly states that ?erbium ions may be excited by a number of optical frequencies ? 514 nm, 532 nm, 667 nm, 800 nm, 980 nm, and 1480 nm.? (see page 118). This is a good example of the misleading, false, and contradictory information that creeps into this book far too often, and is likely to cause a good deal of confusion for people new to WDM technology, and a good deal of aggravation for the rest. I could go on with other examples, but this should be adequate to prove the point.
Some of the book?s problems are more annoying than dangerous. For example, the author introduces the reader to light using photometric units rather than the more commonly used (in telecom, anyway) radiometric units. The author also has a tendency to wander in his descriptions, introducing ideas out of sequence and repeating ideas that have been already developed. Overall, the book reads a little like crib notes, with some important subjects having their own bold-faced headings but only a sentence or two of discussion. One of the biggest shortfalls is the book?s failure to address polarization mode dispersion. It devotes only one short description (in the whole book, as far as I can recall):
?This phenomenon (PMD) is not well understood or theoretically explained, although it is known and demonstrated via experiments.? (see page 54).
Clearly, lots more could (and should) have been said about PMD in a book of this sort.
Reading this book I got the distinct impression that it was rushed to print too soon. The subject matter (DWDM) is good, and the book?s organization is appropriate, it just needs to be polished a bit, filled in where the discussion is too truncated, and have the mistakes and typographical errors corrected. The plan and overall organization, though, are actually pretty nice. The book is organized into three parts. Part one is an overview of the nature of light and the interaction of photons with matter. Subjects include Snell?s law, critical angle, diffraction, holography, polarization, and some really elementary discussions about nonlinear effects.
Part two deals with optical components, beginning with optical fiber, filters, gratings, demultiplexers, light sources, photodetectors, couplers, isolators, polarizers, optical cross-connects, and add-drop multiplexers. This sounds like a lot of ground to cover ? and it is ? but the author does it all in about 120 pages, so you can appreciate that none of the discussions goes into much detail.
Part three is devoted to different coding techniques, and describes return to zero, non-return to zero, ASK, PSK, and FSK formats. Part four describes the specifics of WDM, and in many respects it repeats what was said in part two. Part five summarizes current issues and research (something that I personally find problematical in a book, as it immediately dates it). The book comes with a long list of acronyms (a plus) and pretty complete references at the end of each section (also a plus). The index is also nicely done and complete.
Overall, though, this book is probably not worth your time or money. If you want a good introduction to modern telecommunications, I suggest ?Optical Fiber Telecommunications III? (A and B) by Kaminow and Koch. These books are more expensive, but far more accurate and complete.
Duwayne Anderson, March 17, 2000
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