30-01-2009, 12:02 AM
The device was developed by Ramirez and Roger Green in the university of Warwick?s engineering department. It brings benefits to wireless networks, electronic households and data transfer. It applies techniques used to manipulate radio frequency to select the incoming ?signal frequency ? carried on the infrared beam to produce the optical equivalent of the radio. Optical antenna serves the same purpose as in electronic one .It must collect energy from an area and channel it t o the receiving element. Optical antenna uses a combination of precise curvatures on the lens part of the instrument with a multi-layered filter. This antenna is so precise that it can detect a signal of single wavelength of light and it is hundred times more efficient at gathering of a signal than any previous optical sensor. For external data transfer application it is used at a distance about 4.8km .It allows signal transmitters and receivers to operate at a significant angle to each other and to discriminate much more finely between signals. This new Optical antenna will help turn more people towards infrared as an alternative to the high cost of maintaining wired networks. It is envisioned that a future where millions of such auto aligning FSO channels can e integrated on small 2-d, 3-d structures with standards photolithography techniques offering terabit aggregate bandwidths powered off a battery pack. Designs that enable the use of photolithography using next generation far-infrared LEDs (that are 0.1- 0.2mm in size) is the future study. Optical antenna using Silicon Sensor?s APDs integrated with high speed trans-impedance amplifiers for very high speed, low light level applications.
