Communication is the foundation of virtually all of mankind's enterprises, so it is not a surprise that, over the millennia, a great deal of time and energy have gone into developing its technologies. The twentieth century witnessed great advances in the speed and global coverage of communications as electronics and electromagnetic wave management both came to maturity, often to solve problems for the military but with significant collateral commercial impacts.

By the 1990s, the need for bandwidth to support all types of communication, but most importantly Internet, had become apparent, and the solution was at hand. Optical communications stepped forward and enabled the Internet (or was it the other way around?). As stated by Yu,

Recent advances and innovations in optical technology have thrust optical networking onto center stage as the emerging underlying communications infrastructure supporting the Internet revolution. With its huge potential, the optical components and subsystems sector is well positioned to capture a significant portion of the economic tsunami rolling over the networking world. ^[1]

The difference between this new generation of communication and the developments that led to radio, television, and wire-based telegraph was the conjunction of electronics with optical technology to provide a capability not possible with RF or copper-based systems. In any case, there is no doubt now about the role that must be played by optical communication systems as the need for bandwidth continues almost without end. Any system that involves fixed point-to-point connections can benefit from its higher communication capacity, once a...