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Rating: 
Summary: Good theory
Review: It gives mostly theoretical coverage. Some practical aspects are missing. It briefly covers amplified receivers which should have be given more attention. Good for receiver designer and not so useful for receiver users
Rating:
Summary: Strong introduction to receiver design
Review: This book is an excellent introduction to the field, in that all the key elements are covered: => derivation of the shot-noise limit for optical receivers => description of how one integrates over the distribution of correctly and erroneously received bits in order to find the bit error rate, and why Gaussian distributions are convenient if often inaccurate; what the "Q function" is and why it is used => review of electrical noise sources (thermal and shot noise) and clear description of why a transimpedance topology is often the best choice => summary of sensitivity and error rate for numerous topologies.In pretty much all cases the book strikes a nice balance in content: enough mathematical detail to provide useful results, with enough physical background to understand what the results mean. However, the book is already somewhat dated: it has rather too much information on coherent receivers (which, while very interesting, have not played a significant role to date in the fiber communications scene) and too little information on EDFA's and optically amplified systems. The organization of material could use some improvement: chapter 3 (photodetection) introduces the basic concepts of signal distribution, threshold, and bit error rate determination, which are then not employed until chapter 6 and (mostly) 7, by which time the reader has to go back and review what was presented. The discussion of receiver amplifier circuit topologies is extremely brief, considering that this is one of the basic topics of the book; there is little discussion of the benefits of HBT vs FET implementations and differential vs. single-ended circuits, etc.
Rating:
Summary: Strong introduction to receiver design
Review: This book is an excellent introduction to the field, in that all the key elements are covered: => derivation of the shot-noise limit for optical receivers => description of how one integrates over the distribution of correctly and erroneously received bits in order to find the bit error rate, and why Gaussian distributions are convenient if often inaccurate; what the "Q function" is and why it is used => review of electrical noise sources (thermal and shot noise) and clear description of why a transimpedance topology is often the best choice => summary of sensitivity and error rate for numerous topologies. In pretty much all cases the book strikes a nice balance in content: enough mathematical detail to provide useful results, with enough physical background to understand what the results mean. However, the book is already somewhat dated: it has rather too much information on coherent receivers (which, while very interesting, have not played a significant role to date in the fiber communications scene) and too little information on EDFA's and optically amplified systems. The organization of material could use some improvement: chapter 3 (photodetection) introduces the basic concepts of signal distribution, threshold, and bit error rate determination, which are then not employed until chapter 6 and (mostly) 7, by which time the reader has to go back and review what was presented. The discussion of receiver amplifier circuit topologies is extremely brief, considering that this is one of the basic topics of the book; there is little discussion of the benefits of HBT vs FET implementations and differential vs. single-ended circuits, etc.
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