This paper presents a simple, efficient, yet robust approach, named joint orthogonal combination of local ternary pattern, for automatic forward-looking infrared target recognition. It gives more advantages to describe the macroscopic textures and microscopic textures by fusing variety of scales than the traditional LBP-based methods. In addition, it can effectively reduce the feature dimensionality. Further, the rotation invariant and uniform scheme, the robust LTP, and soft concave-convex partition are introduced to enhance its discriminative power. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve competitive results compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

The rapid and accurate classification of bee pollen grains is still a challenge. The purpose of this paper is to develop a method which could directly classify bee pollen grains based on fluorescence spectra. Bee pollen grain samples of six species were excited by a 409-nm laser diode source, and their fluorescence images were acquired by a hyperspectral microscopy imaging (HMI) system. One hundred pixels in the region of interest were randomly selected from each single bee pollen species. The fluorescence spectral information in all the selected pixels was stored in an n-dimensional hyperspectral data set, where n=37 for a total of 37 hyperspectral bands (465 to 645 nm). The hyperspectral data set was classified using a Fisher linear classifier. The performance of the Fisher linear classifier was measured by the leave-one-out cross-validation method, which yielded an overall accuracy of 89.2%. Finally, additional blinded samples were used to evaluate the established classification model, which demonstrated that bee pollen mixtures could be classified efficiently with the HMI system.

A way to estimate and remove spatially and temporally varying motion blur is proposed, which is based on an optical computing system. The translation and rotation motion can be independently estimated from the joint transform correlator (JTC) system without iterative optimization. The inspiration comes from the fact that the JTC system is immune to rotation motion in a Cartesian coordinate system. The work scheme of the JTC system is designed to keep switching between the Cartesian coordinate system and polar coordinate system in different time intervals with the ping-pang handover. In the ping interval, the JTC system works in the Cartesian coordinate system to obtain a translation motion vector with optical computing speed. In the pang interval, the JTC system works in the polar coordinate system. The rotation motion is transformed to the translation motion through coordinate transformation. Then the rotation motion vector can also be obtained from JTC instantaneously. To deal with continuous spatially variant motion blur, submotion vectors based on the projective motion path blur model are proposed. The submotion vectors model is more effective and accurate at modeling spatially variant motion blur than conventional methods. The simulation and real experiment results demonstrate its overall effectiveness.

Although hyperspectral images (HSIs) captured by satellites provide much information in spectral regions, some bands are redundant or have large amounts of noise, which are not suitable for image analysis. To address this problem, we introduce a method for reconstructing the HSI with noise reduction and contrast enhancement using a matting model for the first time. The matting model refers to each spectral band of an HSI that can be decomposed into three components, i.e., alpha channel, spectral foreground, and spectral background. First, one spectral band of an HSI with more refined information than most other bands is selected, and is referred to as an alpha channel of the HSI to estimate the hyperspectral foreground and hyperspectral background. Finally, a combination operation is applied to reconstruct the HSI. In addition, the support vector machine (SVM) classifier and three sparsity-based classifiers, i.e., orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP), simultaneous OMP, and OMP based on first-order neighborhood system weighted classifiers, are utilized on the reconstructed HSI and the original HSI to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Specifically, using the reconstructed HSI, the average accuracy of the SVM classifier can be improved by as much as 19%.

Accurate ellipse detection in complicated images is a challenging problem due to corruptions from image clutter, noise, or occlusion of other objects. To cope with this problem, an edge-following-based ellipse detection method is proposed which promotes the performances of the subprocesses based on consistency. The ellipse detector models edge connectivity by line segments and exploits inconsistent endpoints of the line segments to split the edge contours into smooth arcs. The smooth arcs are further refined with a novel arc refinement method which iteratively improves the consistency degree of the smooth arc. A two-phase arc integration method is developed to group disconnected elliptical arcs belonging to the same ellipse, and two constraints based on consistency are defined to increase the effectiveness and speed of the merging process. Finally, an efficient ellipse validation method is proposed to evaluate the saliency of the elliptic hypotheses. Detailed evaluation on synthetic images shows that our method outperforms other state-of-the-art ellipse detection methods in terms of effectiveness and speed. Additionally, we test our detector on three challenging real-world datasets. The F-measure score and execution time of results demonstrate that our method is effective and fast in complicated images. Therefore, the proposed method is suitable for practical applications.

Terahertz computed tomography makes use of the penetrability of terahertz radiation and obtains three-dimensional (3-D) object projection data. Continuous-wave terahertz digital holographic tomography with a pyroelectric array detector is presented. Compared with scanning terahertz computed tomography, a pyroelectric array detector can obtain a large quantity of projection data in a short time. To obtain a 3-D image, in-line digital holograms of the object are recorded from various directions and reconstructed to obtain two-dimensional (2-D) projection data; then 2-D cross-sectional images and 3-D images of the internal structure of the object are obtained by the filtered back projection algorithm. The presented system can rapidly reconstruct the 3-D object and reveals the internal 3-D structure of the object. A 3-D reconstruction of a polyethylene straw is presented with a 6% error in retrieved diameter.

High-quality image restoration in real time is a challenge for infrared imaging systems. We present a fast approach to infrared image restoration based on shrinkage functions calibration. Rather than directly modeling the prior of sharp images to obtain the shrinkage functions, we calibrate them for restoration directly by using the acquirable sharp and blurred image pairs from the same infrared imaging system. The calibration method is employed to minimize the sum of squared errors between sharp images and restored images from the blurred images. Our restoration algorithm is noniterative and its shrinkage functions are stored in the look-up tables, so an architecture solution of pipeline structure can work in real time. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by testing its quantitative performance from simulation experiments and its qualitative performance from a developed wavefront coding infrared imaging system.

The emergence of two-stream convolutional networks has boosted the performance of action recognition by concurrently extracting appearance and motion features from videos. However, most existing approaches simply combine the features by averaging the prediction scores from each recognition stream without realizing that some classes favor greater weight for appearance than motion. We propose a fusion method of two-stream convolutional networks for action recognition by introducing objective functions of weights with two assumptions: (1) the scores from streams do not weigh the same and (2) the weights vary across different classes. We evaluate our method by extensive experiments on UCF101, HMDB51, and Hollywood2 datasets in the context of action recognition. The results show that the proposed approach outperforms the standard two-stream convolutional networks by a large margin (5.7%, 4.8%, and 3.6%) on UCF101, HMDB51, and Hollywood2 datasets, respectively.

Automatic patterned fabric defect detection is a promising technique for textile manufacturing due to its low cost and high efficiency. The applicability of most existing algorithms, however, is limited by their intensive computation. To overcome or alleviate the problem, this paper presents a convolutional matching pursuit (CMP) dual-dictionary algorithm for patterned fabric defect detection. A preprocessing with mean sampling is performed to eliminate the influence of background texture of fabric defects. Subsequently, a set of defect-free image blocks are selected as a sample set by sliding window. Dual-dictionary and sparse coefficiencies of the defect-free sample set are obtained via CMP and the K-singular value decomposition (K-SVD) based on a Gabor filter. Then we employ the defect-free and defective fabric image’s projections onto the dual-dictionary as features for defect detection. Finally, the test results are determined by comparing the distance between the features to be measured. Experimental results reveal that the proposed algorithm is effective for patterned fabric defect detection and an acceptable average detection rate reaches by 94.2%.

An application of digital speckle pattern interferometry (DSPI) for the measurement of deformations and strain-field distributions developed in cortical bone around orthodontic miniscrew implants inserted into the human maxilla is presented. The purpose of this study is to measure and compare the strain distribution in cortical bone/miniscrew interface of human maxilla around miniscrew implants of different diameters, different implant lengths, and implants of different commercially available companies. The technique is also used to measure tilt/rotation of canine caused due to the application of retraction springs. The proposed technique has high sensitivity and enables the observation of deformation/strain distribution. In DSPI, two specklegrams are recorded corresponding to pre- and postloading of the retraction spring. The DSPI fringe pattern is observed by subtracting these two specklegrams. Optical phase was extracted using Riesz transform and the monogenic signal from a single DSPI fringe pattern. The obtained phase is used to calculate the parameters of interest such as displacement/deformation and strain/stress. The experiment was conducted on a dry human skull fulfilling the criteria of intact dental arches and all teeth present. Eight different miniscrew implants were loaded with an insertion angulation of 45 deg in the inter-radicular region of the maxillary second premolar and molar region. The loading of miniscrew implants was done with force level (150 gf) by nickel–titanium closed-coil springs (9 mm). The obtained results from DSPI reveal that implant diameter and implant length affect the displacement and strain distribution in cortical bone layer surrounding the miniscrew implant.

Numerical comparisons of temperature measurement through background-oriented schlieren (BOS) and fringe deflection (FD) are presented. Both techniques are based on ray deflection and on the comparison of two different states of a region of observation. A background image displayed on a screen is used in both techniques: for BOS, randomly located spots, and for FD, sinusoidal straight fringes. When a phase object is incorporated into the layout, these spatial structures undergo displacements that are proportional to the gradient of the change of index of refraction. These displacement fields are calculated through digital correlation in BOS and by means of the Fourier phase extraction method in FD. Numerical simulations that model a flame issued by a gas nozzle are presented. The results show that FD presents a slightly larger accuracy for images that either contain relatively high temperature gradients or show low contrast.

Phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (Φ-OTDR) has been widely used in various applications for its distributed measurement capability of dynamic disturbance. However, traditional Φ-OTDR cannot realize quantitative measurement of the strain variation introduced by the external disturbance. Recently, an ultra-weak fiber Bragg grating (UWFBG) array-based Φ-OTDR system has been proposed to realize quantitative measurement. Unfortunately, the spatial resolution in this system is not satisfactory, since spatial resolution is equal to UWFBGs interval and the interval cannot be too small. We have proposed an enhanced system to realize quantitative strain measurement and high spatial resolution monitoring by combining ordinary Φ-OTDR system with the UWFBG array-based Φ-OTDR system. Experimental results showed that quantitative strain measurement at the end of a 5-km long sensing fiber could be realized with a spatial resolution of 4 m while the interval between adjacent UWFGBs was 50 m.

Liquid crystal variable retarders (LCVRs) are computer-controlled birefringent devices that contain nanometer-sized birefringent liquid crystals (LCs). These devices impart retardance effects through a global, uniform orientation change of the LCs, which is based on a user-defined drive voltage input. In other words, the LC structural organization dictates the device functionality. The LC structural organization also produces a spectral scatter component which exhibits an inverse power law dependence. We investigate LC structural organization by measuring the voltage-dependent LC spectral scattering signature with an integrating sphere and then relate this observable to a fractal-Born model based on the Born approximation and a Von Kármán spectrum. We obtain LCVR light scattering spectra at various drive voltages (i.e., different LC orientations) and then parameterize LCVR structural organization with voltage-dependent correlation lengths. The results can aid in determining performance characteristics of systems using LCVRs and can provide insight into interpreting structural organization measurements.

The ring cage is used to suspend an inertial mass and then detect the gravity with an extremely high sensitivity for electrostatic suspension space accelerometers. Geometric errors are required to be at submicron level, which makes it challenging and expensive to machine the ring cage by means of ultraprecision grinding. We propose an alternative solution by optical machining based on interferometric characterization of the geometric error. The flatness of the internal surface is measured with a skip-flat test. To deal with the mechanical perturbation in parallelism measurement, a differential method is proposed to simultaneously cancel out the figure error and tip-tilt of the cavity. Perpendicularity of the internal surfaces is indirectly characterized by combining the internal flatness, parallelism, and perpendicularity of the external surfaces. We introduce another interferometer to monitor the parallelism of two retro-reflectors in real time and measure the perpendicularity and pyramidal error of the external surfaces simultaneously. The test procedure and data reduction are illustrated experimentally.

Photolithography allows large-scale fabrication of nanocomponents in the semiconductor industry. This technique consists of manufacturing a desired pattern on a photoresist film transferred onto the substrate during the etching process. Therefore, the mask quality is essential for reliable etching. For example, the presence of a residual layer of resist might be considered as a mask defect and can lead to the failure of the etching process. We propose the use of a Kohonen self-organizing map for automatic detection of a residual layer from an ellipsometric signature. The feasibility of the suggested inspection by the use of a classification technique is discussed and simulations are carried out on a 750-nm period grating.

The intrinsic hysteresis nonlinearity of the piezo-actuators can severely degrade the positioning accuracy of a tip-tilt mirror (TTM) in an adaptive optics system. This paper focuses on compensating this hysteresis nonlinearity by feed-forward linearization with an inverse hysteresis model. This inverse hysteresis model is based on the classical Presiach model, and the neural network (NN) is used to describe the hysteresis loop. In order to apply it in the real-time adaptive correction, an analytical nonlinear function derived from the NN is introduced to compute the inverse hysteresis model output instead of the time-consuming NN simulation process. Experimental results show that the proposed method effectively linearized the TTM behavior with the static hysteresis nonlinearity of TTM reducing from 15.6% to 1.4%. In addition, the tip-tilt tracking experiments using the integrator with and without hysteresis compensation are conducted. The wavefront tip-tilt aberration rejection ability of the TTM control system is significantly improved with the −3  dB error rejection bandwidth increasing from 46 to 62 Hz.

Stressed lap, compared to traditional polishing methods, has high processing efficiency. However, this method has disadvantages in processing nonsymmetric surface errors. A basic-function method is proposed to calculate parameters for a stressed-lap polishing system. It aims to minimize residual errors and is based on a matrix and nonlinear optimization algorithm. The results show that residual root-mean-square could be <15% after one process for classical trefoil error. The surface period errors close to the lap diameter were removed efficiently, up to 50% material removal.

The free-form optical quasilens surface technology was utilized to develop and design a solid transparent plastic optical lens for the LED down light with the narrow angular light distribution requirement in the LED lighting applications. In order to successfully complete the mission, the precise mid-field angular distribution model of the LED light source was established and built. And also the optical scattering surface property of the Harvey BSDF scattering model was designed, measured, and established. Then, the optical simulation for the entire optical system was performed to develop and design this solid transparent plastic optical lens system. Finally, the goals of 40 deg angular light distribution pattern defined at full width half maximum with glare reduced in the areas of interest and the optical performance of nearly 82% light energy transmission optics were achieved for the LED down light illumination.

By introducing a circular Dammann grating (CDG) into the pump unit, we demonstrated an end-pumped Nd:YAG laser that emitted a vortex and first-order LG mode with high laser efficiency and high power. In our scheme, the CDG was used to reshape the pumping light into an annular profile, and the adaptation of it was realized easily by inserting it into the pump unit of a conventional end-pumped solid-state laser; the laser cavity was simple, compact, and consisted of only a laser crystal and an output coupler. The beam power of this laser reached 1.86 W at an absorbed pump power of 6.38 W with a slope efficiency of 34.5%.

The performance of 3×3, 4×4, 5×5, and 6×6 optical multi-input multioutput (MIMO) mode-division multiplexed multimode fiber (MMF) systems has been investigated using pre-, boost-, and inline-multimode erbium-doped fiber amplifier configuration methods with LP_lm (linearly polarized) modes. The outcome of these configurations has been compared in terms of quality factor (Q-factor) and bit error rate (BER). It is reported that inline-configuration provides best results for all MIMO mode-division multiplexing (MDM) systems covering transmission distance of 100 km with acceptable BER (<10−⁹) and Q-factor (<10  dB) over MMF link to boost performance of MDM system.

We report an experiment of incoherent beam combining based on a 7×1 all-fiber signal combiner with output power up to 6.08 kW. Properties of transmission efficiency and beam quality are analyzed by beam propagation method. Based on the calculative results, a 7×1 all-fiber signal combiner is fabricated. The handle power capacity is tested with average transmission efficiency of 98.9% and beam quality of M²≈10.

Visible light communication (VLC) has no doubt become a promising candidate for future wireless communications due to the increasing trends in the usage of light-emitting diodes (LEDs). In addition to indoor high-speed wireless access and positioning applications, VLC usage in outdoor scenarios, such as vehicle networks and intelligent transportation systems, are also attracting significant interest. However, the complex outdoor environment and ambient noise are the key challenges for long-range high-speed VLC outdoor applications. To improve system performance and transmission distance, we propose to use receiver diversity technology in an outdoor VLC system. Maximal ratio combining–based receiver diversity technology is utilized in two receivers to achieve the maximal signal-to-noise ratio. A 400-Mb/s VLC transmission using a phosphor-based white LED and a 1-Gb/s wavelength division multiplexing VLC transmission using a red–green–blue LED are both successfully achieved over a 100-m outdoor distance with the bit error rate below the 7% forward error correction limit of 3.8×10−³. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest data rate at 100-m outdoor VLC transmission ever achieved. The experimental results clearly prove the benefit and feasibility of receiver diversity technology for long-range high-speed outdoor VLC systems.

A self-calibrated electrical method to measure magnitude response of optical filters is proposed based on dual-frequency-shifted heterodyne. The combined response of optical modulation, filtering, and photodetection is determined from the first frequency-shifted heterodyne, while the reference response of optical modulation and detection is simultaneously obtained from the second frequency-shifted heterodyne, with which the magnitude response of optical filter under test is extracted and self-calibrated. Our method eliminates the extra separate calibration to correct the responsivity fluctuation in the optical modulation and detection. Moreover, it extends double frequency range due to both upper and lower frequency direction measurement at every swept frequency. Magnitude response of optical filter is experimentally measured with our method and compared to that with the conventional method to check its consistency.

A joint algorithm, integrating selective mapping (SLM) and restorable clipping (RC), is proposed for the direct current-biased optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DCO-OFDM) and visible light communication (VLC) system to reduce the nonlinearity impacts of light-emitting diode (LED) aggravated by high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) and DC-bias. The performance of DCO-OFDM VLC system is analyzed and discussed with different techniques of LED nonlinearity alleviation. The simulation results show that compared to the original DCO-OFDM VLC system, the system with the proposed scheme can achieve about 4.8 dB improvement of PAPR reduction and 7 dB improvement of bit error rate (BER) performance. The reason is that the signals acquiring the desired shape in LED linear region can be recovered correctly without distortion induced by LED nonlinearity. It is demonstrated that the proposed SLM-RC technique effectively reduces not only PAPR but also the impacts of LED nonlinearity without BER deterioration.

A simple hexagonal photonic crystal fiber is proposed to simultaneously achieve ultrahigh birefringence, large nonlinear coefficient, and two zero dispersion wavelengths (ZDWs). The finite element method with circular perfectly matched layer boundary condition is used to simulate the designed structure. Simulation results show that it is possible to achieve two closely lying ZDWs of 1.08 and 1.29  μm for x-polarization with 0.88 and 1.20  μm for y-polarization modes, respectively. In addition, an ultrahigh birefringence of 3.15×10−² and a high nonlinear coefficient of 58  W−¹ km−¹ are also obtained at the excitation wavelength of 1.55  μm. The proposed fiber can have important applications in supercontinuum generation, parametric amplification, four-wave mixing, and optical sensors design.

This paper aims to determine the feasibility of deploying free-space optical communication (FSOC) technology in South Africa. In order to achieve this aim, visibility, wind speed, and altitude data for several potential deployment locations over a period of 4 years have been used to compute the FSOC-based atmospheric losses under average and worst case atmospheric conditions. Results have shown that Ermelo has the highest optimal FSOC link distance of 7.5 km at an overall atmospheric loss of 2.8 dB under average conditions, while Durban has the shortest FSOC link distance at 2.6 km at an overall atmospheric loss of 12 dB under worst case conditions. It has also been found that the refractive index structure parameter is mainly altitude dependent. The parameter is larger at lower altitudes due to the more significant heat transfer between the air and the surface. Overall, this study has shown that FSOC technology deployment in South Africa is largely feasible (i.e., deployable with good reliability) for last mile broadband access networks, where link distances between transceivers measure 10 km on average. These results have been based on theoretical models, which take into account reasonable realistic assumptions of worst case atmospheric and the transceiver system parameter losses.

Self-similar pulses are one of the domestic and international research hotspots in the field of nonlinear fiber optics because it can suppress optical wave breaking at high energies. The influence of pumping schemes on the characteristics of self-similar pulses in a passively mode-locked Yb-doped fiber laser is theoretically investigated. The temporal profile and optical spectrum of self-similar pulses in passively mode-locked fiber lasers of different pumping schemes are obtained in the simulation. This study focuses on analyzing the influence of gain bandwidth of gain fiber on the pulse duration, peak power, and single-pulse energy of self-similar pulses.

Crosstalk noise and transmission loss are two key elements in determining the performance of optical routers. We propose a universal method for crosstalk noise and transmission loss analysis for the N-port nonblocking optical router used in photonic networks-on-chip. Utilizing this method, we study the crosstalk noise and transmission loss for the five-, six-, seven-, and eight-port optical routers. We ascertain that the crosstalk noise and transmission loss are different for different input–output pairs. For the five-port optical router, the maximum crosstalk noise ranges from 0 to −7.07  dBm, and the transmission loss ranges from −9.05 to −0.51  dB. Furthermore, based on the crosstalk noise and transmission loss, we analyze optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) and bit error ratio (BER) for the five-, six-, seven-, and eight-port nonblocking optical routers. As the number of ports increases, the minimum average OSNR decreases and the average BER increases. In addition, in order to present the performance of the routers more visually, a fiber-optic communications system is designed to simulate the transmission processes of the signals of the different paths of the routers in Optisystem. The results show that the power amplitude of the input signal is obviously higher than the corresponding output signal. With this method, we can easily evaluate the transmission loss, crosstalk noise, OSNR, and BER of high-radix nonblocking optical routers and conveniently study the performance of the N-port optical router.

This paper presents an enhanced hybrid asymmetrically clipped optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (EHACO-OFDM) scheme, which benefits from the simultaneous transmission of ACO-OFDM, pulse-amplitude-modulated discrete multitone modulation, and direct-current-biased optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DCO-OFDM). Since the entire available bandwidth is utilized for data modulation, this scheme can achieve higher spectral efficiency than HACO-OFDM and ACO-OFDM. Moreover, as a smaller DC bias is introduced in our scheme, it is more power efficient than asymmetrically clipped DC-biased optical OFDM (ADO-OFDM) and DCO-OFDM. A modified receiver is also designed for this system, taking advantage of an iterative algorithm and a pairwise averaging. It has been shown by simulation that our three-path simultaneous transmission scheme can surpass the existing mixed OFDM-based schemes at high data rates. In addition, compared with the noniterative receiver, the modified receiver exhibits significant gains.

Optical phase locking is a key technique in homodyne coherent optical communication, coherent optical detection, and active coherent laser beam combination. In these applications, environmental temperature variation and mechanical vibration would affect the accuracy of phase locking, or even cause losing lock. These disturbances are generally equivalent to introducing phase jitter, phase step, frequency ramp, and frequency step in the loop. A frequency discrimination and control subloop is introduced to improve the frequency acquisition, and the tracking performance is studied experimentally. The loop can track phase step in 0.2 ms, and precisely track ±π/2 sine phase jitter for jittering frequency lower than 1 kHz. For frequency ramp, the residual phase error is unaffected for ramping rates slower than 40  MHz/s. The frequency discrimination and control subloop makes the loop lock quickly under a frequency step larger than the pull-in frequency. The mean tracking time is 31 ms for a 1 MHz frequency step. The maximum trackable frequency step is around 160 MHz. Continuous or step variation of phase and frequency could be tracked by the loop with the frequency discrimination and control subloop.

Turbulence plays an important role in investigating the irradiance scintillation index (SI) for a free-space optical wave propagating through atmospheric turbulence. The Hufnagel–Valley model is used in most studies, where the SI of the slant path is obtained using numerical analysis. A polynomial is proposed for the refractive index structure parameter, on which a closed form is derived for the irradiance SI of a spherical optical wave propagating through a slant atmospheric turbulence. This is used to study signal-to-noise ratio and bit error rate for system performance evaluation. The obtained results demonstrate the simplicity of using the derived closed form of SI compared to statistical methods. The derived expression takes less computational time for SI, which reflects positively on the system performance, which is an essential issue in vehicular mobile applications, in particular.

We developed the extrusion method to prepare arsenic-free chalcogenide glass fibers with glass cladding. By using the double nested extrusion molds and the corresponding isolated stacked extrusion method, the utilization rate of glass materials was greatly improved compared with the conventional extrusion method. Fiber preforms with optimal stability of core/cladding ratio throughout the 160 mm length were prepared using the developed extrusion method. Typical fiber structure defects between the core/cladding interface, such as bubbles, cracks, and core diameter variation, were effectively eliminated. Ge-Sb-Se/S chalcogenide glasses were used to form a core/cladding pair and fibers with core/cladding structure were prepared by thermally drawing the extruded preforms. The transmission loss, fiber bending loss, and other optical characters of the fibers were also investigated.

A T-shaped cavity dual-frequency Nd:YAG laser with electro-optical modulation is proposed, which consists of both p- and s-cavities sharing the same gain medium of Nd:YAG. Each cavity was not only able to select longitudinal mode but also tune frequency using an electro-optic birefringent filter polarization beam splitter + lithium niobate. The frequency difference of dual frequency was tuned through the whole gain bandwidth of Nd:YAG, which is far above the usually accepted free spectral range value in the case of a single-axis laser. As a result, the simultaneous operation of orthogonally and linearly polarized dual-frequency laser was obtained, which coincides with the theoretical analysis based on Jones matrices. The obtained frequency difference ranges from 0 to 132 GHz. This offers a simple and widely tunable source with potential for portable frequency reference applications in terahertz-wave generation and absolute-distance interferometry measurement areas.

Visible light communication (VLC) using light-emitting diodes has been gaining increasing attention in recent years as it is appealing for a wide range of applications such as indoor positioning. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been applied to indoor wireless optical communications in order to mitigate the effect of multipath distortion of the optical channel as well as increasing the data rate. An OFDM VLC system is proposed, which can be utilized for both communications and indoor positioning. A positioning algorithm based on power attenuation is used to estimate the receiver coordinates. We further calculate the positioning errors in all the locations of a room and compare them with those using single-carrier modulation schemes, i.e., on–off keying modulation. We demonstrate that our proposed OFDM positioning system outperforms by 74% its conventional counterpart. Finally, we investigate the impact of different system parameters on the positioning accuracy of the proposed OFDM VLC system.

The characteristic matrix method in thin-film optical theory was used to calculate heterogeneous doped one-dimensional photonic crystals (1-D PCs), which were fabricated by alternate deposition of Te, ZnSe, and Si materials on a silicon wafer. The heterogeneous structure was adopted to broaden the photonic band gap, within which the low reflection valley was achieved by doping. Infrared spectrum tests showed that the average emissivities of the 1-D PC were 0.0845 and 0.281, corresponding, respectively, to the bands of 3 to 5 and 8 to 14  μm. Moreover, the emissivity was 0.45 over the 5 to 8  μm nonatmospheric window, and the reflectivity was 0.28 at the wavelength of 10.6  μm. The results indicated that the heterogeneous doped 1-D PC was able to selectively achieve low emissivities over infrared atmospheric windows and a low reflectivity for the CO₂ laser, which exhibited remarkable competence in compatible infrared and laser stealth applications.

Solution-based perovskite nanoparticles have been intensively studied in the past few years due to their applications in both photovoltaic and optoelectronic devices. Here, based on the common ground between solution-based perovskite and random lasers, we have studied the mirrorless lasing actions in self-assembled perovskite nanoparticles. After synthesis from a solution, discrete lasing peaks have been observed from optically pumped perovskites without any well-defined cavity boundaries. We have demonstrated that the origin of the random lasing emissions is the scattering between the nanostructures in the perovskite microplates. The obtained quality (Q) factors and thresholds of random lasers are around 500 and 60  μJ/cm², respectively. Both values are comparable to the conventional perovskite microdisk lasers with polygon-shaped cavity boundaries. From the corresponding studies on laser spectra and fluorescence microscope images, the lasing actions are considered random lasers that are generated by strong multiple scattering in random gain media. In additional to conventional single-photon excitation, due to the strong nonlinear effects of perovskites, two-photon pumped random lasers have also been demonstrated for the first time. We believe this research will find its potential applications in low-cost coherent light sources and biomedical detection.

Use of long period gratings (LPGs) formed in grapefruit photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with thin-film overlay coated on the inner surface of air holes for gas sensing is demonstrated. The finite-element method was used to numerically simulate the grapefruit PCF–LPG modal coupling characteristics and resonance spectral response with respect to the refractive index of thin-film inside the holey region. A gas analyte-induced index variation of the thin-film immobilized on the inner surface of the holey region of the fiber can be observed by a shift of the resonance wavelength. As an example, we demonstrate a 2,4-dinitrotoluene (DNT) sensor using grapefruit PCF–LPGs. The sensor exhibits a wavelength blue-shift of ∼820 pm as a result of exposure to DNT vapor with a vapor pressure of 411  ppb_v at 25°C, and a sensitivity of 2  pm ppb_v⁻¹ can be achieved.

In photonic label routing networks, recognition of optical labels is one of the key functions. We have proposed waveguide-type optical circuits for recognition of optical labels encoded in quadriphase-shift-keying (QPSK) form. A basic device for the circuits consists of a 3-dB directional coupler, two Y-branches, and an asymmetric X-junction coupler. We employed a scheme of complete interference of optical waves between each coded pulse and a reference pulse in our previously reported paper. The contrast ratio of the output at the destination output port to the outputs at the other ports was reported to decrease to 1.6, 1.28, and 1.13 for two-, three-, and four-stage circuits for recognition of 16, 64, and 256 QPSK labels, respectively. We find optimum circuits with improved contrast ratio of 1.8, 1.6, and 1.47 for 16, 64, and 256 labels, respectively. The recognition operation with the improved circuits is numerically confirmed using the beam propagation method. Noise tolerance of the proposed circuits is also clarified by numerical simulation. The improved circuits are optimum from the viewpoint of efficient use of optical power and noise tolerance.

This PDF file contains the errata for “OE Vol. 55 Issue 05 Paper OE-2016-0425-ERR” for OE Vol. 55 Issue 05