Single tone and multi tone microwave over fiber communication system using direct detection method

In this paper, an analog microwave over fiber link for long haul distance based upon Rate Equation Laser is demonstrated. This system uses the advantage of high potential bandwidth of fiber in transmission of microwave signal. The interface of the two systems needs an up-conversion of microwave band into baseband (at which fiber operates). An Intensity Modulation Direct Detection (IMDD) technique is used to achieve this purpose. The Rate Equation laser is operated in a dynamic state, where its intensity oscillates at a microwave frequency that varies with the input signal fed by wave generator. This system can also use for two modulating tones. The frequency of the first tone is varied from 1 to 20 GHz and second is set at 5 GHz. A data signal of 10 Gbps is transmitted over long haul single mode fiber by single tone system. A very good bit error rate (BER) 10^?40 performances for 100 km and 25 km fiber link is achieved for both single tone and two tones respectively in proposed microwave over fiber communication system.     

Distributed fiber sensing system with wide frequency response and accurate location

A distributed fiber sensing system merging Mach–Zehnder interferometer and phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometer (Φ-OTDR) is demonstrated for vibration measurement, which requires wide frequency response and accurate location. Two narrow line-width lasers with delicately different wavelengths are used to constitute the interferometer and reflectometer respectively. A narrow band Fiber Bragg Grating is responsible for separating the two wavelengths. In addition, heterodyne detection is applied to maintain the signal to noise rate of the locating signal. Experiment results show that the novel system has a wide frequency from 1 Hz to 50 MHz, limited by the sample frequency of data acquisition card, and a spatial resolution of 20 m, according to 200 ns pulse width, along 2.5 km fiber link.     

Development of an efficient coherent optical source at 6.04 μm

Efficiency as high as 26% is obtained for generation of mid-infrared radiation at 6.04 μm by frequency doubling of ammonia laser emission at 12.08 μm in a 15 mm long type-I cut AgGaSe₂ crystal. The NH₃ laser used for this work is optically pumped by a commercial TEA CO₂ laser operating on 9.22 μm and produces pulsed output of ∼210 mJ with a duration of ∼200 ns at 12.08 μm. The generated radiation at 6.04 μm is separated out from the residual radiation at 12.08 μm by exploiting the principle of polarization dependent diffraction of reflection grating.     

Realization of compatible stealth material for infrared,laser and radar based on one-dimensional doping-structure photonic crystals

To inhibit the radiant infrared energy between 8 and 14 μm, which is the infrared atmospheric window, and decrease the echo power of detecting laser and radar, to achieve compatible stealth, a doping structural one-dimensional photonic crystal (1-D PC) with Ge, ZnSe and Si was fabricated; and then combine it with radar absorbing material (RAM) to make a compound. After that, the reflection spectra of this compound was tested, and the result shows a high average reflectance (89.5%) in 8–14 μm waveband, and a reflective valley (39.8%) in the wavelength of 10.6 μm, which is the wavelength of CO₂ laser; and the reflectance in radar band shows that at high frequency, especially between 7.8 and 18 GHz, the radar power is strongly absorbed by this material and the reflected energy attenuate over 10 dB within the range from 11.1 GHz to 18.3 GHz, even 24.5 dB to the most in the frequency of 14.6 GHz.     

A Doppler lidar with atomic Faraday devices frequency stabilization and discrimination

In this paper, we report a Doppler lidar in which the laser frequency is stabilized and the backscattered light frequency is discriminated by a multi-peak and a less-peak atomic Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF), respectively. The transmission spectrum of the FADOF is stable as it is based on an atomic transition, and slightly tunable with a magnet due to Zeeman effect. The high frequency stability of the FADOF provides a high velocity accuracy; and the tunability of the FADOF transmission spectrum makes the measurement range flexible. We describe an experimental lidar system based on cesium FADOFs, and the experimental error is of±0.74 m/s over velocities ranging from ?40 to +40 m/s.     

Wide-band fanned-out supercontinuum source covering O-, E-, S-, C-, L- and U-bands

A wide-band supercontinuum source generated by mode-locked pulses injected into a Highly Non-Linear Fiber (HNLF) is proposed and demonstrated. A 49 cm long Bismuth–Erbium Doped Fiber (Bi–EDF) pumped by two 1480 nm laser diodes acts as the active gain medium for a ring fiber laser, from which mode-locked pulses are obtained using the Non-Polarization Rotation (NPR) technique. The mode-locked pulses are then injected into a 100 m long HLNF with a dispersion of 0.15 ps/nm km at 1550 nm to generate a supercontinuum spectrum spanning from 1340 nm to more than 1680 nm with a pulse width of 0.08 ps and an average power of ?17 dBm. The supercontinuum spectrum is sliced using a 24 channel Arrayed Waveguide Grating (AWG) with a channel spacing of 100 GHz to obtain a fanned-out laser output covering the O-, E-, S-, C-, L- and U-bands. The lasing wavelengths obtained have an average pulse width of 9 ps with only minor fluctuations and a mode-locked repetition rate of 40 MHz, and is sufficiently stable to be used in a variety of sensing and communication applications, most notably as cost-effective sources for Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) networks.     

Road traffic noise shielding by vegetation belts of limited depth

Road traffic noise propagation through a vegetation belt of limited depth (15 m) containing periodically arranged trees along a road is numerically assessed by means of 3D finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) calculations. The computational cost is reduced by only modeling a representative strip of the planting scheme and assuming periodic extension by applying mirror planes. With increasing tree stem diameter and decreasing spacing, traffic noise insertion loss is predicted to be more pronounced for each planting scheme considered (simple cubic, rectangular, triangular and face-centered cubic). For rectangular schemes, the spacing parallel to the road axis is predicted to be the determining parameter for the acoustic performance. Significant noise reduction is predicted to occur for a tree spacing of less than 3 m and a tree stem diameter of more than 0.11 m. This positive effect comes on top of the increase in ground effect (near 3 dBA for a light vehicle at 70 km/h) when compared to sound propagation over grassland. The noise reducing effect of the forest floor and the optimized tree belt arrangement are found to be of similar importance in the calculations performed. The effect of shrubs with typical above-ground biomass is estimated to be at maximum 2 dBA in the uniform scattering approach applied for a light vehicle at 70 km/h. Downward scattering from tree crowns is predicted to be smaller than 1 dBA for a light vehicle at 70 km/h, for various distributions of scattering elements representing the tree crown. The effect of the presence of tree stems, shrubs and tree crowns is predicted to be approximately additive. Inducing some (pseudo)randomness in stem center location, tree diameter, and omitting a limited number of rows with trees seem to hardly affect the insertion loss. These predictions suggest that practically achievable vegetation belts can compete to the noise reducing performance of a classical thin noise barrier (on grassland) with a height of 1–1.5 m (in a non-refracting atmosphere).     

Effects of trench oxide and field plates on the breakdown voltage of SOI LDMOSFET

To improve the breakdown voltage, we propose a SOI-based LDMOSFET with a trench structure in the drift region. Due to the trench oxide and underneath boron implanted layer, the surface electric field in the drift region effectively reduced. These effects resulted in the increment of breakdown voltage for the trenched LDMOS more than 100 V compared with the conventional device. However, the specific on-resistance, which has a trade-off relationship, is slightly increased. In addition to the trench oxide on the device performance, we also investigated the influence of n− drift to n+ drain junction spacing on the off-state breakdown voltage. The measured breakdown voltages were varied more than 50 V with different n− to n+ design spaces and achieved a maximum value at L_DA = 2.0 μm. Moreover, the influence of field plate on the breakdown voltage of trench LDMOSFET was investigated. It is found that the optimum drain field plate over the field oxide is 8 μm.     

IQ quadrature demodulation algorithm used in heterodyne detection

In order to obtain better detection results of heterodyne, we used phase IQ quadrature demodulation algorithm to process the data which detected by laser heterodyne. Based on laser heterodyne interferometer, processing the data in the interferometer phase IQ quadrature demodulation algorithm from the signal to noise ratio, sampling rate, sampling rate, filter order and cutoff frequency, verify the effects of these system parameters to the phase precision, and choose the best parameters to obtain a better phase precision through experiment as: the signal to noise ratio is 25 dB, the IF signal frequency is 98.3 MHz, 98.5 MHz, 99.1 MHz, 99.5 MHz and 100 MHz, the sampling rate is 512–2048, the cutoff frequency and order of the filter are 0.11 and 40, respectively.     

High-power eye-safe KTA-OPO driven by YVO4/Nd:YVO4 composite laser

We present a high-power 1.53 μm laser based on intracavity KTA-OPO driven by diode-end-pumped acousto-optical Q-switched YVO₄/Nd:YVO₄ composite. The composite crystal was utilized for reducing the thermal effect, and the mode mismatch compensating OPO cavity was designed for efficient OPO conversion. The output power of eye-safe laser at 1535 nm was up to 4.4 W with the pump power of 27 W, corresponding to a diode-to-signal conversion efficiency of 16.3%. To our knowledge, this is the highest output power in diode-end-pumped circumstances. In the experiment, the strong yellow light generated by Raman conversion and frequency doubling in the KTA crystal was observed.     

Picosecond laser cutting and drilling of thin flex glass

We investigate the feasibility of cutting and drilling thin flex glass (TFG) substrates using a picosecond laser operating at wavelengths of 1030 nm, 515 nm and 343 nm. 50 μm and 100 μm thick AF32^®Eco Thin Glass (Schott AG) sheets are used. The laser processing parameters such as the wavelength, pulse energy, pulse repetition frequency, scan speed and the number of laser passes which are necessary to perform through a cut or to drill a borehole in the TFG substrate are studied in detail. Our results show that the highest effective cutting speeds (220 mm/s for a 50 μm thick TFG substrate and 74 mm/s for a 100 μm thick TFG substrate) are obtained with the 1030 nm wavelength, whereas the 343 nm wavelength provides the best quality cuts. The 515 nm wavelength, meanwhile, can be used to provide relatively good laser cut quality with heat affected zones (HAZ) of <25 μm for 50 μm TFG and <40 μm for 100 μm TFG with cutting speeds of 100 mm/s and 28.5 mm/s, respectively. The 343 nm and 515 nm wavelengths can also be used for drilling micro-holes (with inlet diameters of ⩽75 µm) in the 100 μm TFG substrate with speeds of up to 2 holes per second (using 343 nm) and 8 holes per second (using 515 nm). Optical microscope and SEM images of the cuts and micro-holes are presented.     

Resonator micro optic gyro with double phase modulation technique using an FPGA-based digital processor

Experiments on resonator micro-optic gyro (RMOG) with a digital proportional integral (PI) feedback scheme are performed. In this experimental setup, the key rotation sensing element is a polarization maintaining silica waveguide ring resonator (WRR) with a ring length of 7.9 cm and a diameter of 2.5 cm. A good linearity of 0.0015% over a wide range of ± 2 × 10⁴ °/s can be achieved for the RMOG theoretically. The optimal digital PI feedback scheme is adopted in the frequency servo loop to reduce the reciprocal frequency fluctuations due to the WRR resonance frequency and laser frequency drifts. Residual equivalent input fluctuation can be reduced as low as 0.03 °/s/√Hz based on the optimal digital PI feedback scheme, which is close to the shot noise limited spectral density 0.02 °/s/√Hz of the RMOG with the input optical power of 0.2 mW. Relationship between RMOG output signal and angular rate is obtained from ± 0.1 °/s to ± 5 °/s. The standard deviation of the residuals between RMOG output results and linear fit curve is 0.066 °/s. For an integration of the processing circuit, all the processing circuit is implemented by a field programmable gate array (FPGA) instead of instruments. The output of this digitalized RMOG is obtained over a range of ± 550 °/s. The linearity of this digitalized RMOG is 0.0169%.     

Early sinkhole detection using a drone-based thermal camera and image processing

Accurate advance detection of the sinkholes that are occurring more frequently now is an important way of preventing human fatalities and property damage. Unlike naturally occurring sinkholes, human-induced ones in urban areas are typically due to groundwater disturbances and leaks of water and sewage caused by large-scale construction. Although many sinkhole detection methods have been developed, it is still difficult to predict sinkholes that occur in depth areas. In addition, conventional methods are inappropriate for scanning a large area because of their high cost. Therefore, this paper uses a drone combined with a thermal far-infrared (FIR) camera to detect potential sinkholes over a large area based on computer vision and pattern classification techniques.To make a standard dataset, we dug eight holes of depths 0.5–2 m in increments of 0.5 m and with a maximum width of 1 m. We filmed these using the drone-based FIR camera at a height of 50 m. We first detect candidate regions by analysing cold spots in the thermal images based on the fact that a sinkhole typically has a lower thermal energy than its background. Then, these regions are classified into sinkhole and non-sinkhole classes using a pattern classifier. In this study, we ensemble the classification results based on a light convolutional neural network (CNN) and those based on a Boosted Random Forest (BRF) with handcrafted features. We apply the proposed ensemble method successfully to sinkhole data for various sizes and depths in different environments, and prove that the CNN ensemble and the BRF one with handcrafted features are better at detecting sinkholes than other classifiers or standalone CNN.     

High speed and high accuracy inspection of in-tray laser IC marking using line scan CCD with a new calibration model

This study used a high-speed high-resolution line scan CCD, and a Delta motor drive module to provide position feedback in a laser marking system. Based on a novel algorithm, image processing of the high-speed CCD scan was allowed the accurate determination of the laser marking location. This system was calibrated using a template, and a novel 1-D calibration model of the line scan CCD was developed. The relevant position of each IC in the tray was obtained based on the calibration algorithm. Gain and offset calibration, sub-pixel calculation, and normalized checks were performed in this automatic optical inspection system. The total processing time for laser correction marking, scanning and identification was about 2～2.5 s, the positioning accuracy was×9 μm, and the industrial specification and process capability index Cpk reached over 1.2.     

Spectral efficient hybrid wireless optical broadband access network (WOBAN) based on transmission of wireless MIMO OFDM signals over WDM PON

In this paper, a spectral efficient hybrid wireless optical broadband access network (WOBAN) is proposed and demonstrated based on the transmission of wireless multi-input multi-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO OFDM) signals over wavelength division multiplexing passive optical network (WDM PON). By using radio over fiber (ROF) techniques, the optical fiber is well adapted to propagate multiple wireless services having different carrier frequencies. It is a known fact that multiple wireless signals having the same carrier frequency cannot propagate over a single optical fiber at the same time, such as MIMO signals feeding multiple antennas in fiber wireless (FiWi) system. A novel optical single-sideband frequency translation technique is designed and simulated to solve this problem. This technique allows four pairs of wireless MIMO OFDM signals with the same carrier frequency for each pair to be transmitted over a single optical fiber by using one optical source per wavelength. The crosstalk between the different MIMO channels with the same frequency is eliminated, since each channel is upconverted on specified wavelength with enough channel spacing between them. Also the maximum crosstalk level between the different MIMO channels with different frequencies is very low around ?76 dB. The physical layer performance of the proposed WOBAN is analyzed in terms of the bit error rate (BER), error vector magnitude (EVM), and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The proposed WOBAN achieves 7.68 Gb/s data rate for 20 km for the optical back-end and 240 Mb/s for the outdoor wireless front-end.     

A novel OCS millimeter-wave generation scheme with data carried only by one sideband and wavelength reuse for uplink connection

We propose a novel optical carrier suppression (OCS) millimeter-wave generation scheme with data carried only by one sideband using a dual-drive Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM) in radio-over-fiber system, and the transmission performance is also investigated. As the signal is transmitted along the fiber, there is no time shifting of the codes caused by chromatic dispersion. Simulation results show that the eye diagram keeps open and clear even when the optical millimeter-waves are transmitted over 110 km and the power penalty is about 1.9 dB after fiber transmission distance of 60 km. Furthermore, due to the +1 order sideband carrying no data, a full duplex radio-over-fiber link based on wavelength reuse is also built to simplify the base station. The bidirectional 2.5 Gbit/s data is successfully transmitted over a 40 km standard single mode fiber with less than 0.8 dB power penalty in the simulation. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results show that our scheme is feasible and we can obtain a simple cost-efficient configuration and good performance over long-distance transmission.     

High efficiency diode-pumped slab oscillator and amplifier for space-based application

The design and performance of conduction-cooled, laser diode-pumped oscillator and amplifier slab laser featuring high efficiency, high pulse energy and high beam quality for space-based application are reported. The oscillator was a diode-pumped Q-Switched Nd:YAG slab laser using unstable resonator, and the amplifiers were two zig-zag Nd:YAG slabs based on a side-pumped slab geometry. A near diffraction-limited output of 450 mJ in a 10 ns pulse at a repetition rate of 20 Hz was obtained, corresponding to an optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of over 20%.     

High-speed non-intrusive measurements of fuel velocity fields at high-pressure injectors

Using a single high-speed camera and a frequency modulated laser, a novel approach is presented for fast velocity field measurements in unsteady spray flows. The velocity range is from zero up to several 100 m/s, which requires a high measurement rate and a large dynamic. Typically, flow measurements require to seed tracer particles to the fluid. A paradigm shift to seeding-free measurements is presented. The light scattered at the phase boundaries of the fluid droplets is evaluated. In order to validate the high-speed measurement system, a detailed uncertainty analysis is performed by means of measurements as well as simulations. Thereby, variations of the scattered light intensity, which are based on the high temporal velocity gradients, are found to be the main contribution to the uncertainty. The eventually measurement results, obtained at a measurement rate of 500 kHz, exhibit spray velocities ranging from 0 m/s up to 400 m/s in less than 1 ms, and the detection of unsteady and irregular flow phenomena with a characteristic time of several μs is achieved. This demonstrates the high measurement rate, the high temporal resolution and the large measurement range of the proposed high-speed measurement system.     

Cascaded continuous-wave singly resonant optical parametric oscillator pumped by a single-frequency fiber laser

We present a cascaded continuous-wave singly resonant optical parametric oscillator (SRO) delivering idler output in mid-IR and terahertz frequency range. The SRO was pumped by an ytterbium-doped fiber laser with 27 W linear polarization pump powers, and based on periodically poled MgO:LiNbO₃ crystal (PPMgLN) in two-mirror linear cavity. The PPMgLN is 50 mm long with 29.5 μm period. The idler power output at 3811 nm was obtained 2.6 W. The additional spectral components that have been attributed to cascaded optical parametric processes are described at increasing pump levels. Besides the initial signal component at about 1476.8 nm, further generated wavelengths with frequency shifts about 47 cm^?1, 94 cm^?1 and 104 cm^?1 were observed. It was speculated that the idler waves lie in the terahertz (THz) domain from the observed results.     

Optical millimeter-wave signal generation by frequency quadrupling using one dual-drive Mach–Zehnder modulator to overcome chromatic dispersion

We propose a novel approach to generate quadrupling-frequency optical millimeter-wave using a dual-drive Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM) in radio-over-fiber system. By properly adjusting the phase difference in the two modulation arms of MZM, the direct current (DC) bias, the modulation index and the gain of base-band signal, the quadrupling-frequency optical millimeter-wave with signal only carried by one second-order sideband is generated. As the signal is transmitted along the fiber, there is no time shift of the codes caused by chromatic dispersion. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the eye diagram keeps open and clear even when the quadrupling-frequency optical millimeter-wave are transmitted over 110 km and the power penalty is about 0.45 dB after fiber transmission distance of 60 km. Furthermore, due to another second-order sideband carrying no signals, a full duplex radio-over-fiber link based on wavelength reuse is also built to simplify the base station. The bidirectional 2.5 Gbit/s data is successfully transmitted over 40 km standard single mode fiber with less than 0.6 dB power penalty in the simulation.