Automatic Segmented area Structured Lighting

The aim of the research is to devise an automatic way to view and segment a scene of discrete 3D objects with or without ambient illumination and then to fully illuminate each object in turn without illuminating other objects or the background. The structured illumination must be controlled in time and space to have the same shape, size and position as the object. There is a need for such a system in the entertainment and visual arts industries for sound and light shows at night outdoors for selectively illuminating buildings, in caves or caverns for illuminating rock formations, or for illuminating mannequins, statues or waxwork figures in theatres sequentially in synchrony with a voiceover narration discussing each in turn. In these applications, such a technique has an advantage over the use of spotlights as only the object of interest is illuminated and not nearby objects or the background so helping the viewer to concentrate on just the object of interest. In this paper a video camera and projector system is reported with real time image processing feedback via a computer. The way in which the image processing algorithms in the feedback loop were developed to overcome various issues is explained

Active and adaptive CFRP mirror using MFC piezoeletric actuator for thermal deformation and atmospheric aberration correction

Large precision composite mirrors for space missions and telescopes can be heavy, massive and expensive to fabricate. In this work, the mass of the mirrors is reduced by using space approved carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) material and employing micro-fiber composite (MFC) actuators for aberration correction and phase manipulation in an active/adaptive optical mirror system. The carbon fiber mirror is fabricated with 16 layers of prepreg composite MTM44- 1/IMS65 carbon fiber and one layer of polishable resin. The layers are cured under pressure in an autoclave machine in a pressure and temperature-controlled environment. 2 different piezoelectric actuators, Push actuators and MFC actuators, are tested and the phase shift, form factor and surface deformation due to the active actuators are compared. Push actuators are the most common means of active optics. CFRP structure and surface deformation after actuator’s effect are investigated theoretically using finite element analysis with the aid of COMSOL software and by optical experiments

The optics of an autostereoscopic multiview display

An autostereoscopic head-tracked back projection display that uses an RGB laser illumination source and a fast light engine is described. Images are horizontally scanned columns controlled by a spatial light modulator that directs two or more images in the directions of the apposite viewers’ eyes

Fluid Flow Velocity Measurement in Active Wells Using Using Fiber Optic Distributed Acoustic Sensors

Real time monitoring of the behaviour of fluids along the whole length of fluid filled well pipes is important to the oil and gas industry as it enables well operators to maximize oil and gas production and optimize the quality of oil and gas produced, whilst reducing the cost. Flow speed measurement is one of the key approaches in fluid flow monitoring in wells. In this paper, three methods are designed, developed and demonstrated to estimate the speed and direction of flow at a range of depths in real world oil, gas and water wells using acoustic data set from distributed acoustic sensors that attached to the wells. The developed methods are based on a new combination of several techniques from signal processing, machine learning and physics. The Terabyte size acoustic dataset are recorded from each well as a two-dimensional function of both distance along the pipeline and time. The aim of the developed methods is estimating flow speed at each point along over 3000 meters pipelines and increasing the accurately and efficiently of the flow speed calculation compared to the existing method. The methods developed in this paper are computationally inexpensive, which make them suitable for real time well monitoring

Optical Waveguide End Facet Roughness and Optical Coupling Loss

This paper investigates the end facet roughness of multimode polymer channel waveguides fabricated on FR4 printed circuit boards, PCBs, when cut at right angles to their optical axis by milling routers for optical butt-coupling connectors and compares it with that resulting from dicing saws and polishing and proposes a novel end facet treatment. RMS surface roughness of waveguide end facets, measured by AFMs, are compared for a range of rotation speeds and translation speeds of a milling router. It was found that one-flute routers gave significantly less rough surfaces than two or three-flute routers. The best results were achieved for a one-flute router when the milling bit was inserted from the PCB side of the board with a rotation speed of 15,000 rpm and a translation speed of 0.25 m/min which minimized the waveguide core end facet RMS roughness to 183 ± 13 nm and gave input optical coupling loss of 1.7 dB ± 0.5 B and output optical coupling loss of 2.0 dB ± 0.7 dB. The lowest RMS roughness was obtained at chip loads of 16 μm/revolution. High rotation speeds should be avoided as smearing of the end facet occurs possibly due to polymer heating and softening. For the first time to our knowledge, channel waveguide optical insertion loss is shown to be linearly proportional to the ratio of the waveguide core end facet RMS roughness to its autocorrelation length. A new fabrication technique for cut waveguide end facet treatment is proposed and demonstrated which reduces the insertion loss by 2.60 dB ± 1.3 dB which is more than that achieved by the closest available index matching fluid which gave 2.23 dB ± 1.2 dB. The new fabrication method gives a more robust end facet for use in commercial products

FirstLight: Pluggable Optical Interconnect Technologies for Polymeric Electro-Optical Printed Circuit Boards in Data Centers

The protocol data rate governing data storage devices will increase to over 12 Gb/s by 2013 thereby imposing unmanageable cost and performance burdens on future digital data storage systems. The resulting performance bottleneck can be substantially reduced by conveying high-speed data optically instead of electronically. A novel active pluggable 82.5 Gb/s aggregate bit rate optical connector technology, the design and fabrication of a compact electro-optical printed circuit board to meet exacting specifications, and a method for low cost, high precision, passive optical assembly are presented. A demonstration platform was constructed to assess the viability of embedded electro-optical midplane technology in such systems including the first ever demonstration of a pluggable active optical waveguide printed circuit board connector. High-speed optical data transfer at 10.3125 Gb/s was demonstrated through a complex polymer waveguide interconnect layer embedded into a 262 mm × 240 mm × 4.3 mm electro-optical midplane. Bit error rates of less than 10-12 and optical losses as low as 6 dB were demonstrated through nine multimode polymer wave guides with an aggregate data bandwidth of 92.8125 Gb/s

Microring resonator-based optical router for photonic networks-on-chip

We report the design and analysis of a non-blocking microring resonator-based optical switched router, which can be used as a switch node to construct a large photonic routing network on chips. The proposed optical router has sixteen microrings, fourteen crossings and four 90° waveguide bends, which could be tuned through the thermo-optic (TO) or electro-optic (EO) effect. Compared with a previously described 5 × 5 optical switching router, our router comprises fewer microring resonators (MRRs), crossings and bends, which results in a more compact design, a higher switching speed, a lower loss and a lower optical power consumption. In addition, all the rings operate at the same wavelength making it scalable to a network of any size

Design and implementation of an electro-optical backplane with pluggable in-plane connectors

The design, implementation and characterisation of an electro-optical backplane and an active pluggable in-plane optical connector technology is presented. The connection architecture adopted allows line cards to be mated to and unmated from a passive electro-optical backplane with embedded polymeric waveguides. The active connectors incorporate a photonics interface operating at 850 nm and a mechanism to passively align the interface to the optical waveguides embedded in the backplane. A demonstration platform has been constructed to assess the viability of embedded electro-optical backplane technology in dense data storage systems. The demonstration platform includes four switch cards, which connect both optically and electronically to the electro-optical backplane in a chassis. These switch cards are controlled by a single board computer across a Compact PCI bus on the backplane. The electrooptical backplane is comprised of copper layers for power and low speed bus communication and one polymeric optical layer, wherein waveguides have been patterned by a direct laser writing scheme. The optical waveguide design includes densely arrayed multimode waveguides with a centre to centre pitch of 250μm between adjacent channels, multiple cascaded waveguide bends, non-orthogonal crossovers and in-plane connector interfaces. In addition, a novel passive alignment method has been employed to simplify high precision assembly of the optical receptacles on the backplane. The in-plane connector interface is based on a two lens free space coupling solution, which reduces susceptibility to contamination. Successful transfer of 10.3 Gb/s data along multiple waveguides in the electro-optical backplane has been demonstrated and characterised

Optical loss and crosstalk in multimode photolithographically fabricated polyacrylate polymer waveguide crossings

Complex interconnection patterns in electrical PCBs have to use multiple layers of copper tracks. However, the same interconnections can be made in a single layer using optical waveguides as they cross on the same layer. Waveguide crossings where two waveguides intersect in the same optical layer are particularly important components as they offer OPCB layout designers additional flexibility to solve layout problems such as routing around cutout areas, electrical components and other obstacles on an OPCB. Use of waveguide crossings can also help to avoid sharp bends in the design as these bends are an important cause of optical loss. Despite all of the advantages of waveguide crossings, and although most of the light travels along the intended waveguide, a proportion of the optical power in one waveguide will couple into the crossing waveguide at each intersection point or couple out of the original waveguide and into the cladding. This coupling phenomenon causes optical loss and crosstalk in the system. In this paper, the results of an investigation of the optical loss due to the crossing of multimode polymer waveguide, fabricated on FR4 printed circuit boards, PCBs, as a function of crossing angles are presented theoretically and experimentally. The results from ray tracing simulation is compared with the experiment results and the contrast is discussed. © 2014 SPIE