In this paper, we propose and demonstrate an elementary non-mechanical beam aiming and steering system with a single liquid crystal optical phase array (LC-OPA) and charge-coupled device (CCD). With the conventional method of beam steering control, the LC-OPA device can realize one dimensional beam steering continuously. An improved beam steering strategy is applied to realize two dimensional beam steering with a single LC-OPA. The whole beam aiming and steering system, including an LC-OPA and a retroreflective target, is controlled by the monitor. We test the feasibility of beam steering strategy both in one dimension and in two dimension at first, then the whole system is build up based on the improved strategy. The experimental results show that the max experimental pointing error is 56 μrad, and the average pointing error of the system is 19 μrad.

This paper describes the development and function of an optical fiber temperature sensor made out of a compound of epoxy and optical glass particles. Because of the different thermo-optic coefficients of these materials, this compound exhibits a strong wavelength and temperature dependent optical transmission, and it therefore can be employed for fiber optic temperature measurements. The temperature at the sensor, which is integrated into a polymer optical fiber (POF), is evaluated by the ratio of the transmitted intensity of two different light-emitting diodes (LED) with a wavelength of 460 nm and 650 nm. The material characterization and influences of different sensor lengths and two particle sizes on the measurement result are discussed. The temperature dependency of the transmission increases with smaller particles and with increasing sensor length. With glass particles with a diameter of 43 μm and a sensor length of 9.8 mm, the intensity ratio of the two LEDs decreases by 60% within a temperature change from 10℃ to 40℃.

In view of problems existing in the detection of the traditional hydraulic system, such as the large volume of sensor and the low measurement accuracy, a new one-piece target type flow sensor is designed and researched based on fiber Bragg grating (FBG). A compact structure is designed, which is convenient to be dismantled, processed, and installed, based on the analysis of the principle of FBG and the structure of target type flow sensor. The force of target put in fluid flow is turned into the FBG wavelength drift, with a corresponding relationship. The problem on the cross sensitivities of the temperature and strain is solved effectively by using double FBG symmetrically pasted on the both surfaces of the cantilever. The impact on the fluid state is analyzed through simulation in the software FLUENT, and the results show that the impact was smaller than that of the traditional structure. The results of experiments in the hydraulic system show that there is a good linear relationship between the change in the dual FBG central wavelength and mass loading on the target sheet has a good linear relationship, and the sensitivity is twice that of a single FBG sensitivity.

The macro-bending induced optical fiber cladding modes frustrated total internal reflection effect is used to realize the liquid level probe with a simple structure of single macro-bend polymer optical fiber loop. The test results show that the extinction ratio reaches 1.06 dB. “First bath” phenomenon is not obvious (about 0.8%). The robustness of the sensor is better, and the ability of anti-pollution is stronger compared with the conventional sensors. The process of making this sensing probe is extremely easy, and the cost is very low.

Based on the low-coherence interferometric principles, a cost-effective all-fiber Mach-Zehnder multiplexing system is proposed and demonstrated. The system consists of two interferometers: sensing interferometer and demodulation interferometer. By scanning an optical tunable delay line back and forth constantly with a stable speed, sensing fibers with different optical paths can be temporal interrogated. The system is experimentally proved to have a high performance with a good stability and low system noises. The multiplexing capacity of the system is also investigated. An experiment of measuring the surrounding temperature is carried out. A sensitivity of 12 μm/℃ is achieved within the range of 20 ℃ to 80 ℃. This low cost fiber multiplexing system has a potential application in the remote monitoring of temperature and strain in building structures, such as bridges and towers.

The effect of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) placed inside the fiber ring of a cavity ring down (CRD) configuration is studied. The limitations and advantages of this configuration are discussed, and the study of the ring-down time as a function of the current applied and gain to the EDFA is also presented. In this case, the power fluctuations in the output signal are strongly dependent on the cavity ring-down time with the EDFA gain.

A wireless passive pressure sensor equivalent to inductive-capacitive (LC) resonance circuit and based on alumina ceramic is fabricated by using high temperature sintering ceramic and post-fire metallization processes. Cylindrical copper spiral reader antenna and insulation layer are designed to realize the wireless measurement for the sensor in high temperature environment. The high temperature performance of the sensor is analyzed and discussed by studying the phase-frequency and amplitude-frequency characteristics of reader antenna. The average frequency change of sensor is 0.68 kHz/℃ when the temperature changes from 27℃ to 700℃ and the relative change of twice measurements is 2.12%, with high characteristic of repeatability. The study of temperature-drift characteristic of pressure sensor in high temperature environment lays a good basis for the temperature compensation methods and insures the pressure signal readout accurately.

The reflective spectrum power and the bandwidth of the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) under gradient strain are researched and experimentally demonstrated. The gradient strain is applied on the FBG, which can induce FBG bandwidth broadening, resulting in the variation of reflective power. Based on the coupled-mode theory and transfer matrix method, the segmental linear relationship between the gradient strain, the reflective power, and the bandwidth is simulated and analyzed, and the influence of the FBG length on the reflective spectrum is analyzed. In the experiment, the strict gradient stain device is designed; the experimental results indicate that the reflective optic power and the bandwidth of the FBG under gradient stain are concerned with the length of the FBG. Experimental results are well consistent with the theoretical analysis, which have important guiding significance in the FBG dynamic sensing.

A curvature sensor based on an Fabry-Perot (FP) interferometer was proposed. A capillary silica tube was fusion spliced between two single mode fibers, producing an FP cavity. Two FP sensors with different cavity lengths were developed and subjected to curvature and temperature. The FP sensor with longer cavity showed three distinct operating regions for the curvature measurement. Namely, a linear response was shown for an intermediate curvature radius range, presenting a maximum sensitivity of 68.52 pm/m-1. When subjected to temperature, the sensing head produced a similar response for different curvature radii, with a sensitivity varying from 0.84 pm/℃ to 0.89 pm/℃, which resulted in a small cross-sensitivity to temperature when the FP sensor was subjected to curvature. The FP cavity with shorter length presented low sensitivity to curvature.

In this work, the effect of thermal annealing on the characteristics of silicon homojunction photodetector was studied. This homojunction photodetector was fabricated by means of plasma-induced etching of p-type silicon substrate and plasma sputtering of n-type silicon target in vacuum. The electrical and spectral characteristics of this photodetector were determined and optimized before and after the annealing process. The maximum surface reflectance of 1.89% and 1.81%, the maximum responsivity of 0.495 A/W and 0.55 A/W, the ideality factor of 1.80 and 1.99, the maximum external quantum efficiency of 76% and 83.5%, and the built-in potential of 0.79 V and 0.72 V were obtained before and after annealing, respectively.

This paper presents the development of a cost-effective precision fiber Bragg grating (FBG) interrogation system using long-wavelength vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL). Tuning properties of a long-wavelength VCSEL have been studied experimentally. An approximately quadratic dependence of its wavelength on the injection current has been observed. The overall design and key operations of this system including intensity normalization, peak detection, and quadratic curve fitting are introduced in detail. The results show that the system achieves an accuracy of 1.2 pm with a tuning range of 3 nm and a tuning rate of 1 kHz. It is demonstrated that this system is practical and effective by applied in the FBG transformer temperature monitoring.

Range gated is a laser ranging technique that has been applied in various fields due to its good application prospects. In order to improve the effectiveness of this method, influence factors contributing to the system performance should be well understood. Thus this paper performs theoretical and experimental investigation to comprehend the effects caused by multiple factors on range gated reconstruction. Our study focuses on the distance, target reflection, and acquisition time step parameter where their impacts on the quality of range reconstruction are analyzed. The presented experimental results show the expected trends of range error to support the validity of our theoretical model and discussion which can be used in future improvement works.

The semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) has obvious advantages in all-optical signal processing, because of the simple structure, strong non-linearity, and easy integration. A variety of all-optical signal processing functions, such as all-optical wavelength conversion, all-optical logic gates and all-optical sampling, can be completed by SOA. So the SOA has been widespread concerned in the field of all-optical signal processing. Recently, the polarization rotation effect of SOA is receiving considerable interest, and many researchers have launched numerous research work utilizing this effect. In this paper, a new all-optical flip-flop structure using polarization switch (PSW) based on polarization rotation effect of SOA is presented.

When a satellite is in orbit, its flywheel will generate micro vibration and affect the imaging quality of the camera. In order to reduce this effect, a rubber shock absorber is used, and a numerical model and an experimental setup are developed to investigate its effect on the micro vibration in the study. An integrated model is developed for the system, and a ray tracing method is used in the modeling. The spot coordinates and displacements of the image plane are obtained, and the modulate transfer function (MTF) of the system is calculated. A satellite including a rubber shock absorber is designed, and the experiments are carried out. Both simulation and experiments results show that the MTF increases almost 10 %, suggesting the rubber shock absorber is useful to decrease the flywheel vibration.