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This article reports on the use of a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) platform for local ultra-stable optical frequency distribution through a 90 m-long fiber network. This platform is used to implement a fully digital treatment of the Doppler-cancellation scheme required by fiber links to be able to distribute ultra-stable frequencies. We present a novel protocol that uses aliased images of a digital synthesizer output to directly generate signals above the Nyquist frequency. This approach significantly simplifies the setup, making it easy to duplicate within a local fiber network. We demonstrate performances enabling the distribution of an optical signal with an instability below 10-17 at 1 s at the receiver end. We also use the board to implement an original characterization method. It leads to an efficient characterization of the disturbance rejection of the system that can be realized without accessing the remote output of the fiber link.
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Passive wireless transducers are used as sensors, probed by a RADAR system. A simple way to separate the returning signal from the clutter is to delay the response, so that the clutter decays before the echoes are received. This can be achieved by introducing a fixed delay in the sensor design. Acoustic wave transducers are ideally suited as cooperative targets for passive, wireless sensing. The incoming electromagnetic pulse is converted into an acoustic wave, propagated on the sensor substrate surface, and reflected as an electromagnetic echo. According to a known law, the acoustic wave propagation velocity depends on the physical quantity under investigation, which is then measured as an echo delay. Both conversions between electromagnetic and acoustic waves are based on the piezoelectric property of the substrate of which the sensor is made. Investigating underground sensing, we address the problems of using GPR (Ground-Penetrating RADAR) for probing cooperative targets. The GPR is a good candidate for this application because it provides an electromagnetic source and receiver, as well as echo recording tools. Instead of designing dedicated electronics, we choose a commercially available, reliable and rugged instrument. The measurement range depends on parameters like antenna radiation pattern, radio spectrum matching between GPR and the target, antenna-sensor impedance matching and the transfer function of the target. We demonstrate measurements at depths ranging from centimeters to circa 1 m in a sandbox. In our application, clutter rejection requires delays between the emitted pulse and echoes to be longer than in the regular use of the GPR for geophysical measurements. This delay, and the accuracy needed for sensing, challenge the GPR internal time base. In the GPR units we used, the drift turns out to be incompatible with the targeted application. The available documentation of other models and brands suggests that this is a rather general limitation. We solved the problem by replacing the analog ramp generator defining the time base with a fully digital solution, whose time accuracy and stability relies on a quartz oscillator. The resulting stability is acceptable for sub-surface cooperative sensor measurement.
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Detecting chemical species in gas phase has recently received an increasing interest mainly for security control, trying to implement new systems allowing for extended dynamics and reactivity. In this work, an open-loop interrogation strategy is proposed to use radio-frequency acoustic transducers as micro-balances for that purpose. The resulting system is dedicated to the monitoring of chemical compounds in gaseous or liquid-phase state. A 16 Hz standard deviation is demonstrated at 125 MHz, with a working frequency band in the 60 to 133 MHz range, answering the requirements for using Rayleigh- and Love-wave-based delay lines operating with 40-µm acoustic wavelength transducers. Moreover, this electronic setup was used to interrogate a high-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonator (HBAR) microbalance, a new sensor class allowing for multi-mode interrogation for gravimetric measurement improvement. The noise source still limiting the system performance is due to the analog-to-digital converter of the microcontroller, thus leaving open degrees-of-freedom for improving the obtained results by optimizing the voltage reference and board layout. The operation of the system is illustrated using a calibrated galvanic deposition at the surface of Love-wave delay lines to assess theoretical predictions of their gravimetric sensitivity and to compare them with HBAR-based sensor sensitivity.
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High-frequency guided acoustic Brillouin modes have recently been observed in small-core silica photonic crystal fibers. In this paper, we investigate the temperature dependence of the optical sideband frequency generated by one of these guided acoustic waves. The experimental results show a temperature coefficient of 100 kHz/°C at an acoustic resonance frequency of 1.15 GHz and are in very good agreement with the theoretical predictions. This coefficient demonstrates a temperature sensitivity 10 times larger than that previously reported in conventional single-mode fibers, which is promising in view of potential applications to optical fiber sensors.
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This article introduces an improved approach for the characterization of in-plane rigid-body vibration, based on digital processing of stroboscopic images of the moving part. The method involves a sample preparation step, in order to pattern a periodic microstructure on the vibrating device, for instance, by focused ion beam milling. An image processing method has then been developed to perform the optimum reconstruction of this a priori known object feature. In-plane displacement and rotation are deduced simultaneously with a high resolution (10-2 pixel and 0.5 x 10(-3) rad, respectively). The measurement principle combines phase measurements-that provide the high resolution-with correlation-that unwraps the phase with the proper phase constants. The vibration modes of a tuning fork are used for demonstrating the capabilities of the method. For applications allowing the sample preparation, the proposed methodology is more convenient than common interference methods or image processing techniques for the characterization of the vibration modes, even for amplitudes in the nanometer range.