Preface. List of Abbreviations and Symbols. 1 Introduction. 1.1 A History of Optical Communication. 1.2 Emerging Applications. 1.3 Silicon Opto-Electronics. 1.4 Outline of the Work. 2 Optical Receiver Fundamentals. 2.1 Introduction. 2.2 The Optical Receiver Front-End. 2.2.1 A Transceiver for Optical Communication Systems. 2.2.2 A Pickup Unit for Optical Storage Systems. 2.3 Binary Data Formats. 2.4 Bit Error Rate and Sensitivity. 2.4.1 Bit error rate...