Photonics

The  drones have emerged as a major new threat to civilian infrastructure and military. Counter-drone technology, also known as counter-UAS, C-UAS, or counter-UAV technology, refers to systems that are used to detect and/or intercept unmanned aircraft. One of the attractive Anti-drone weapons have been directed energy weapons (DEWs) both of …

Terahertz (THz, 1012 Hz) technology is based on light sources with frequencies much lower than of visible light, and slightly higher than of microwaves. Such light sources have a number of unique capabilities, for example that it can propagate through most insulating materials such as paper, plastic, cardboard, clothes etc., …

Moore’s Law which stated that the number of transistors on a chip will double approximately every two years has been the driver of semiconductor industry in boosting the complexity, computational performance and energy efficiency while reducing cost. The increase in computing performance of electronic computers is becoming more and more …

Fiber optical circulators are used to separate optical signals that travel in opposite directions in an optic fiber in order to complete bidirectional transmission. Optical circulators are also known as non-reciprocal optics, which means when the light travels in the opposite direction, changes in the light properties are not reversed. …

Conventional optical fibers are fabulously successful, but they have profound limitations. They contain a glass core at the center of the fiber through which light is transmitted. However, not only does this glass center limit the speed of the light as it passes through, but it also adversely affects other …

Conventional daylighting scheme employing windows and skylights are no longer so useful especially for daylighting of high-rise and intensive buildings. Residential buildings with limited natural lighting are generally lit by fuel-based electricity which contributes to increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Alternatively, the concentrated solar energy can be transmitted …

The volume of space between the Earth’s surface out to geosynchronous orbit is enormous—equivalent to 240,000 times all the Earth’s oceans. Yet the number of objects calling that volume home is growing all the time—not just with satellites but with debris of all kinds, natural and manmade. And keeping track …

A U.S.-developed space surveillance telescope has been assembled at a new facility in Western Australia and is expected to start operating in 2022, the U.S. Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center announced April 2020. The telescope, designed to track and identify debris and satellites more than 22,000 miles above Earth, …

Free-space optical communication (FSO) is an optical communication technology that uses light propagating in free space to wirelessly transmit data for telecommunications or computer networking. “Free space” means air, outer space, vacuum, or something similar. FSO operates on the Line-of-Sight phenomenon, consisting of a LASER at source and detector at …