Have you ever felt that the very title, Progress in Optics, conjured an image in your mind? Don’t you see a row of handsomely printed books, bearing the editorial stamp of one of the most brilliant members of the optics community, and chronicling the field of optics since the invention of the laser? If so, you are certain to move the bookend to make room for Volume 16, the latest of this series. It contains seven chapters on widely diverging topics, written by well-known authorities in their fields. These are: 1) Laser Selective Photophysics and Photochemistry by V. S. Letokhov, 2) Recent Advances in Phase Profiles (sic) Generation by J. J. Clair and C. I. Abitbol, 3 ) Computer-Generated Holograms: Techniques and Applications by W.-H. Lee, 4) Speckle Interferometry by A. E. Ennos, 5 ) Deformation  Invariant, Space-Variant Optical  Pattern Recognition by D. Casasent and D. Psaltis, 6) Light Emission from High-Current Surface-Spark Discharges by R. E. Beverly, and 7) Semiclassical Radiation  Theory within a  QuantumMechanical Framework by I. R. Senitzkt. The  breadth of topic  matter  spanned  by  these  chapters makes it impossible, for this reviewer at least, to pass judgement on the comprehensiveness, relevance, and completeness of every chapter. With an editorial board as prominent as that of Progress in Optics, however, it seems hardly likely that such comments should be necessary. It should certainly be possible to take the authority of each author as credible. The only remaining judgment to be  made on these chapters is their readability. In short, what are they like to read? The first sentence of the first chapter greets the eye with an obvious typographical error: “The creation of coherent laser light source, that have tunable radiation, opened the . . . .” Two pages later we find: “When two types of atoms or molecules of different isotopic composition ( A and B ) have even one spectral line that does not overlap with others, it is pos-

Progress in optics

Polymer optical fibers (POFs) have significant advantages for many sensing applications, including high elastic strain limits, high fracture toughness, high flexibility in bending, high sensitivity to strain and potential negative thermo-optic coefficients. The recent emergence of single-mode POFs has enabled high precision, large deformation optical fiber sensors. This article describes recent advances in both multi-mode and single-mode POF based strain and temperature sensors. The mechanical and optical properties of POFs relevant to strain and temperature applications are first summarized. POFs considered include multi-mode POFs, solid core single-mode POFs and microstructured single-mode POFs. Practical methods for applying POF sensors, including connecting and embedding sensors in structural materials, are also described. Recent demonstrations of multi-mode POF sensors in structural applications based on new interrogation methods, including backscattering and time-of-flight measurements, are outlined. The phase‐displacement relation of a single-mode POF undergoing large deformation is presented to build a fundamental understanding of the response of single-mode POF sensors. Finally, this article highlights recent single-mode POF based sensors based on polymer fiber Bragg gratings and microstructured POFs. (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)

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Polymer optical fiber sensors—a review

In this paper, a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technique for indoor optical wireless (OW) communication is proposed. The technique is referred to as \emph{optical spatial modulation (OSM)}. The key concept is based on spatial modulation (SM). At any given time instant, only one transmitter is active and the others are inactive. A transmitter in space is considered as a spatial constellation point which is assigned a unique bit sequence. Consequently, transmitters are turned on and off depending on the incoming data bits, similar to the activation of constellation points in traditional digital modulation schemes. Hence, a data rate of the base two logarithm of the number of transmit units is achieved. The active transmitter radiates a certain intensity level at a particular time instant. At the receiver side, the optimal SM detector is slightly modified and used to estimate the spatial constellation point. The estimated spatial constellation point is used to arrive at the original bit stream via de-mapping. The upper bound bit-error-ratio (BER) of OSM is analyzed for a MIMO configuration consisting of four transmit units (light emitting diodes (LEDs)) and four receive units (photo diodes (PDs)) in a room. The BER performance is determined for different transmitter and receiver separation distances and different transmitter half power semiangles. It is shown that the proposed OSM technique achieves twice and four times the data rate as compared to OOK (on-off keying) and PPM (pulse-position modulation), respectively.

Indoor MIMO Optical Wireless Communication Using Spatial Modulation

This review is devoted to the analysis of the problems related to fabrication of the Si porous layers. The review was motivated by a great interest to Si-based porous materials from nano- to macro-scale for various applications in electronics, optoelectronics, photonics, chemical sensors, biosensors, etc. The peculiarities of the silicon porosification and the principles of preparing porous layers are considered in the present article. Various methods used for Si porosification such as chemical stain etching, chemical vapor etching, laser-induced etching, metal-assisted etching, spark processing and reactive ion (plasma) etching were analyzed. However, the main attention was focused on electrochemical porosification of Si. The review discusses in detail the influence of parameters such as electrolyte composition and pH, current density, etching time, temperature, wafer doping and orientation, lighting, magnetic field, and ultrasonic agitation on the process of Si porosification. It was shown that the stru...

Silicon Porosification: State of the Art

For future short-range applications, optical wireless communications present a viable and promising supplemental technology to radio wireless systems. This contribution presents a review of infrared and visible light optical wireless indoor communications, including basics, state of the art, challenges and prospects. Advanced approaches based on diversity techniques and adaptive signal processing show potential to achieve both high spatial coverage and high bit rates of more than 100 Mb/s.

Recent Developments in Optical Wireless Communications using Infrared and Visible Light

Free-Space Optics; Propagation and Communication

Free-Space Optics

Quantitative control of RTM6 epoxy resin polymerisation by optical index determination

Optical study of porous silicon buried waveguides fabricated from p-type silicon

We apply a combination of optical low coherence reflectometry and a layer-peeling method to the synthesis of a fiber grating. The index modulation amplitude we obtain is compared with a Krug measurement result and the dc refractive index is derived from the phase measurement.

Christian Boisrobert

Papers

Free-Space Optics; Propagation and Communication

Free-Space Optics

Quantitative control of RTM6 epoxy resin polymerisation by optical index determination

Optical study of porous silicon buried waveguides fabricated from p-type silicon

Experimental synthesis of fiber Bragg gratings using optical low coherence reflectometry