I finally stopped thinking about it and just did it today -- answered my first question in QRC. I confess to cherry-picking a question that seemed easier for me to complete. The only difficulty to it was that the questioner only put a single phrase in the question - "optical communications" -- and the indicator that the question was for an assignment. So I had to assume general information was needed.

However, I was able to locate some general resources and offer th einstructions...