Understanding Fiber Optics

As someone who works in the financial field that had to get up to speed on fiber optics, I purchased this book, "Introduction to Fiber Optics" by Crisp, and "Fiber Optic Reference Guide" by Goff. This was definitely the most technically oriented of the three, but it did have good detail for the areas where the other two books weren't thorough enough. This text is definitely more for targeted research as a reference book, and not what you should get if you want to sit down and read up on the subject.There were a lot of areas where the added depth provided by this book were helpful, but it certainly has the feel of a book more oriented towards academia and professional engineers.

Great information. Thanks

Needed it for fiber optics class. It is well planed and written and has a lot of information. It could be used as a self study introduction to fiber optics.

A very good starting point. Allows you space to build on what you read.

The right book at the right time for an attractive price. My employees will get the basics, fast, with this textbook.

The fourth edition of this book is a product of many years of practical experience and trials of previous editions. I always wondered if more information than just reader's level as beginner, intermediate and advanced should be printed on the technical books. What you are looking for in a book and level of satisfaction depends on your involvement in that area of expertise. Please stay with me while I try my thinking on this book. If you are already an expert working in Optical Engineering field this book is not a research paper. Probably you need Warren J. Smith's book Modern Optical Engineering. If you are a student learning about Fiber Optics this book has enough information and practice questions to be qualified as a good text book, but may not be enough for your Graduate School research thesis. If you are like me, a practicing Network Engineer or technician, this book provides everything you need to know and more than enough information. It is written in an easy to understand style, and chapters are in a perfect sequence and length. That's why I am rating it 5 Stars.

I personally don't have a rating to this book, however the system is asking me to rate this book with stars or I couldn't post, so I put a 4-star to cope with the current general rating.As for the possible mistake mentioned in the previous review (December 26, 2000), I think I might have an explaination for the misunderstanding.Jeff Hecht says that voice is coded in the telephone network with 7 bit samples to give a 56 kbps data stream. The fact is that this is what happens in the US because when the Bell system first installed those packet switching nodes for the packet switched networks around the US. They adopted 56 Kbps clear channels for interconnections, prior to the standard protocol being set up by the international standards bodies.When the international standard called SS7 was finally completed, AT&T adopted it; however, the legacy of 56 Kbps clear channels remains in the US.So this is what happened in the US, while the rest of the world is using 64 Kbps clear channels.FYI.

I'll be entering the master's program in electrical engineering at Stanford in the fall in fiber optic communications and I'm so glad that I read this book before hand. This book has to be one of the easiest technical (although nontheoretical/nonmathematical) reads. It helped me understand fundamental concepts without getting bogged down in mathematical derivations. Hecht presents the material in a very easy to understand manner. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about fiber optics. Now, after having read this book I'm confident to tackle more advanced texts in fiber optic communications.