Introduction

The emergence of high-speed applications such as video-conferencing and the rapid growth in the number of networked users demand a network infrastructure which is capable of delivering huge amounts of data in real-time over a wide area. Optical fiber has emerged as an excellent medium for such future networks in view of its tremendous bandwidth potential (around 50 THz). It is already being used as a transmission medium of choice by several telecommunications companies in the United States and abroad (Com, 1998; Chaffee, 1987). Apart from its huge bandwidth capability, optical fiber also offers a low attenuation loss (roughly 0.2 dB/km between 1200 nm and 1600 nm wavelengths) and extremely low bit-error rates, making it ideally suited for long-haul communications.