Book excerpt: High speed circuits are crucial for increasing the bandwidth of transmission and switching of voice/video/data over optical fiber networks. The ever-increasing demand for bit rates higher than those available due to the explosion of Internet traffic has driven engineers to develop integrated circuits of performance approaching 100 Gb/s. Commercial lightwave products using high speed circuits of 10 Gb/s and beyond are readily available.High Speed Circuits for Lightwave Communications presents the latest information on circuit design, measured results, applications, and product development. It covers electronic and opto-electronic circuits for transmission, receiving, and cross-point switching. These circuits were implemented with various state-of-the-art IC technologies, including Si BJT, GaAs MESFET, HEMT, HBT, as well as InP HEMT and HBT. The book, written by more than 50 experts, will benefit graduate students, researchers, and engineers who are interested in or work in this exciting and challenging field of optical communications.