Here’s the first authoritative resource on polarization behavior in optical fibers that gives you the state-of-the-art understanding and techniques needed to mitigate its impact on today’s telecommunication and measurement-sensing systems. Written by the world’s foremost expert on polarization propagation, this comprehensive volume provides a wealth of analytical and practical knowledge that will prove indispensable whether you’re designing compensation schemes for polarization mode dispersion (PMD), optimizing point and distributed polarimetric optical-fiber sensors, controlling the influences of polarization phenomena in non-linear interactions, or protecting systems from polarization noise. This essential book analyzes polarization effects, including non-linear effects, and their influence in communications and sensing. You get full details on telecom system degradation caused by PMD, PDL, and PDG and techniques for mitigating it, plus insight into the effects and consequences of polarization on solitons, amplifiers, and switches. Fiber polarization in sensing applications is explained through detailed treatment of such key issues as stress/strain, displacement, point sensing, and distributed sensing. A final section explores the latest advances in non-linear phenomena, PMD compensation, fast optical switching, generic distributed sensing, quantum computing and communication, and optical signal processing. Supported by 135 illustrations, this definitive work will be essential to your understanding of optical fibers and to your efforts in designing more powerful telecommunications or measurement-sensing systems.