Fiber Optics

New Technology Demonstrated During Arctic Exercise

During a multi-service exercise, the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) successfully demonstrated a...

The Next Generation of Mission-Critical Communications Infrastructure is Here

The critical role of spectrum superiority in the success of battlefield campaigns is evidenced by the enormous investments being made in electronic warfare (EW)...

Multimode Optical Fiber Sensing

Although a vast majority of fiber optic strain sensors use single mode fiber, multimode fiber has a higher nonlinear threshold that enables higher light levels and lower noise.

Facing 5G New Radio (NR) Test Challenges

The use of CA, MIMO, and beamforming technologies will lead to more antennas and radio ports that need to be tested.

Speeding AV Testing with a Digital Twin

A European company has developed time-saving simulation software for users of the University of Michigan’s Mcity CAV (connected and autonomous vehicle) testing facility in Ann Arbor. It has...

Ruggedizing Coaxial and Fiber Optic Cable Assemblies from Mechanical Strain

Learn how to protect critical conductors, dielectric, and optical fibers from deforming, cracking, or unraveling

Experiments Differentiate Between Underground Nuclear Tests and Earthquakes

Sandia National Laboratories researchers, as part of a group of National Nuclear Security Administration scientists, have wrapped up years of field experiments...

Understanding Fiber Optic Transceiver Design and Test Rules

The design of avionics systems must balance several factors. First, engineers want to increase the performance of the systems installed in aircraft or spacecraft. Second, they want...

Ultrafast Optics: Vector Cavity Lasers — Physics and Technology

Fiber lasers have found widespread applications in industrial material processing, scientific research and military systems due to their advantages of easy maintenance,...

New Products: August 2019 Aerospace & Defense Technology

Temperature Elements for Flight-Critical Equipment

FCI Aerospace’s (San Marcos, CA) AS-TE Temperature Element Series sensors utilize precision resistance temperature...

How Miniaturized Distributed Modular Architecture Advances Avionics Design

A centralized IMA approach offers several advantages.

LASER World of PHOTONICS, Day 2: Bigger is Better

Many vendors at this year's event made their presence known with mega-sized booths.

LASER World of PHOTONICS 2019

The bi-annual Laser World of Photonics exhibition begins today.

The Rodney Dangerfield of Automated-Driving Sensors?

The emerging era of highly-automated driving comes courtesy of much-vaunted sensor technology—spinning lasers, penetrating radar and sonar blips. But the sensor that gets the least...

Combating Infrared Threats on the Battlefield

There have been several news headlines lately about offenders pointing commercial lasers at helicopters or police personnel, temporarily blinding and distracting them. An increasing number of...

Optical Interconnect Design Challenges in Space

More and more aerospace applications are incorporating fiber optics technology into their designs due to its many advantages over copper. The thinner fiber solutions provide higher speed over a...

Laser-Based System Could Expand Space-to-Ground Communication

A new research project announced recently as a collaboration between the Georgia Institute of Technology and satellite communications provider Xenesis could help open the...

Designing for Compressive Sensing: Compressive Art, Camouflage, Fonts, and Quick Response Codes

Compressive sensing (CS) is a relatively new field that has caused a lot of excitement in the signal processing community. It has superseded...

Identifying and Isolating Signals Using Radio Frequency Photonics

A single antenna can be used for both transmission and reception. To accomplish this, the transmission must be isolated from the reception. In Figure 1, a radio frequency...

Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) Suppression and Long Delivery Fibers at the Multikilowatt Level with Chirped Seed Lasers

One obstacle in the scaling of high-power fiber lasers arises because of nonlinear effects (e.g., stimulated...

Tests Show How Plastic Parts Deform During Flight

Scientists have conducted flights using a measurement configuration based on fiber optics to accurately verify the degree to which carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) parts deform...

RF Photonics for Avionics Signal Processing

The maturity of RF photonic components has reached the point where fiber optic links are being system-tested to replace traditional copper coax links on avionic platforms. Many demonstrations of RF...

Air And Missile Defense System To Get Smarter Software

When a missile is launched against an enemy target, it would be nice to have a lot of good information about that target. But when "decision makers push the fire button, they may have...

Rare-Earth-Doped Soft Glass Optical Fibers for Coherent Wavelength Sources Above 2 Microns

Rare-earth-doped soft glass optical fibers were developed and characterized for fiber lasers emitting at wavelengths longer than 2 microns to allow...

Terahertz Fiber-Optic Lasers for Detection of Explosives

Fiber-optic lasers of a proposed type would serve as sources of coherent radiation at frequencies between 0.5 and 4.0 THz and output power levels ≥100 mW. In the original application...