Optical communications: future prospects, role and importance of education in electrical engineering

Optical communications has resulted in remarkable breakthroughs in communications systems in the last two decades, such that the current communications world could not be imagined without the backbone optical fiber networks. Also, in the access network, optical fibers have replaced the copper wires in many developed countries.
Moreover, emerging technologies such as optical wireless and visible light communications, smart optical networks, and all-optical processing underline the role of this branch of communications engineering in the upcoming years. However, optical communications does not have a considerable proportion in the electrical engineering education in our country. This will prevent domestic development and implementation of the above-mentioned technologies and will make the country dependent to the foreign sources for any related services in this field. In this paper, a scheme is proposed for the training of the fundamentals of optical communications at both undergraduate and graduate levels in electrical engineering. This would provide a background of the principles and develop basic expertise in the engineers to deal with current and future technologies in optical communications.