telecommunications Archives

Metamaterials and the new rules of refraction

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$Zanotto and Pitanti are developing metamaterials, a new type of material for the manipulation of optical and mechanical waves through negative refraction$

Waves are amazing things. We use light waves for telecommunications applications and make use of mechanical waves for everything from musical instruments to sensing. Being able to control and use waves, though, relies on components to manipulate their properties. Drs Simone Zanotto and Alessandro Pitanti at the CNR – Istituto di Nanoscienze in Pisa, Italy, are now developing a new […]

Listening across the oceans: Distributed acoustic sensing

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A yellow fibre optic cable is lying across the bottom of the sea floor. These cables are useful as sensors for distributed acoustic sensing for sea life surveillance and protection

Fibre optic cables have become the backbone of digital communication across the oceans. These cables are not just useful for transmitting information from one location to another – they can also be used as an incredibly long sensor array in themselves. Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) is a powerful way of measuring sound and vibrations in the sea floor. Dr Ole […]

Monitoring photonic crystal fibre fabrication in real-time

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Photonic crystal fibres (PCFs) were first explored in the 1990s, and as conventional optical fibres have revealed their limits, interest in PCFs has only increased further. PCFs use a specific pattern of air-holes which stretch the length of the fibre to guide light. These delicate microstructures are functionally essential, but currently there is no way to monitor their production in […]