A new programme from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) aims to address a key weakness of autonomous and semi-autonomous land systems: the need for active illumination to navigate in low-light conditions. Accurate position and attitude information of the vehicle as well as the ability to detection static …
Read More »Military developing Free Space Optical(FSO) or Laser communications for ultrafast secure communications that are harder to detect and disrupt
Free Space Optical or Laser communications is creating a new communications revolution, that by using visible and infrared light instead of radio waves for data transmission is providing large bandwidth, high data rate, license free spectrum, easy and quick deployability, low mass and less power requirement. It also offers low …
Read More »LIDAR proving to be a valuable sensor for Smarter space management, Infrastructure monitoring, Security and Disaster Response
Lidars (Light Detection and Ranging) are similar to radars in that they operate by sending light pulses to the targets and calculate distances by measuring the received time. The key advantages of LIDAR is its superior accuracy and its ability to see through masking items, such as leaves, trees, and …
Read More »Laser directed energy weapons technology breakthroughs enable them to be deployed on Trucks, Warships and Airplanes
The Laser Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs) offer a transformational ‘game changer’ to counter asymmetric and disruptive threats, while facing increasingly sophisticated traditional challenges. Laser technology provides major advantages for military applications over kinetic weapons due to High precision and rapid on-target effect, precise and scalable effects, avoidance of collateral damage …
Read More »Augmented reality displays moving towards smart contact lenses to enable vision of invisible computing
Smart glasses refer to wearable computing devices that add information to what the user sees. These devices function in a way similar to mobile phones and tablets and have the ability of processing and implementing various programs and applications. A majority of the smart glasses currently used in the market …
Read More »Portable atomic clock technologies including chip-scale optical frequency synthesizer to enable ultra accurate GPS
Optical atomic clocks are at the pinnacle of time measuring devices, losing less than one second every ten billion years. Currently though, they are massive devices, weighing hundreds of kilograms. In order to have an optimal practical function that could be utilised by your average person, their size needs to …
Read More »Quantum cascade laser (QCL) critical component for standoff chemical warfare agent detection and Direct Infrared Countermeasure (DIRCM) systems
The quantum cascade laser is a special kind of semiconductor laser, usually emitting in the mid- and long-wave infrared bands. Such a laser operates on laser transitions not between different electronic bands but on intersubband transitions of a semiconductor structure. Their wide tuning range and fast response time allow for faster …
Read More »Distributed optical fiber sensors (DOFS) are superb for infrastructure and earthquake monitoring
The fiber optic sensors also called as optical fiber sensors use optical fiber or sensing element. These Sensors can measure a large variety of parameters, such as temperature, pressure, strain, refractive index, vibrations, displacements, bending, loading, and liquid level or concentration of chemical species. Over the past decade, optical …
Read More »Photonic ADCs have removed the bottlenecks of bandwidth limitations and timing jitter of electronic analog-to-digital converter (ADC)
The performance of digital receivers used in modern military radar, communication, and surveillance systems is often limited by the performance of the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) used to digitize the received signal. Ultrafast ADCs are critical in military applications such as military software-defined radio, radar, and electronic counter-warfare (ECW) that require …
Read More »Militaries looking for anti-laser weapon defences as laser DEW threats to airline pilots, soldiers and military vehicles is rising
Laser attacks targeting pilots and air crews are a major concern across the world with most attacks reported to take place during take-off and landing. According to figures from the US Federal Aviation Authority, there were 6,753 laser illuminations reported in 2017. Until recently, the expense of lasers had limited their use …
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