Abstract. The paper investigates theories of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) as one type of thirdorder nonlinear optics effect, which is widely used and rapidly developing in optical telecommunication systems. System limitations caused by SBS-induced noise were also considered for digital and analog optical communication systems. The present work provides a thorough examination of the properties of various types of SBS materials, as well as lasers, Brillouin frequency shifter and other devices developed to take advantage of SBS’s properties. Lastly, we summarized recent advances made in this field for solving those difficulties and challenges.