Optical integrated circuits

The notorious implication of integrated optics in the nowadays communication systems makes more interesting the development of optical integrated devices and circuits. The evolution of the communication systems was sustained by the integrated optics and it is obvious that the actual interests in the optical communications are also transferred and adapted to integrated optics. The presentation of actual state-of-the-art in this field is a good opportunity both for an evaluation on the above mentioned evolution and for discerning the actual trends and their perspectives. These trends, guided by applicative goals, have to be discussed not only from the theoretical point of view but also from a practical one.