Optical Fiber and Photonic Waveguide Circuit Architectures – Applications in Distributed Sensing and Communications

This project will serve as the important Ateneo counterpart for the recently awarded Royal Society Project “Distributed Fibre Sensing for sustainable cities and action on short-term environmental- shocks”. This funding will increase the support for the number of critical Research Assistants/Engineers (as only one such fulltime position was provided in the funded Royal Society project) as well as enhance the capacity and know-how for architecting and designing optical fiber and waveguide circuits for various applications. A distributed fiber sensor technology will be provided for by University of Southampton partners for use in a vehicular traffic measurement campaign in Ateneo campus with the data for input into a new vehicular flow model. In parallel, our team will research other applications for these fiber interferometric sensors in critical infrastructure monitoring (such as subway tunnels and bridges) and explore integrated circuit waveguide forms for applications in optical communications or RF photonics. This project aims to build core-research competency on optical fiber and photonic waveguide circuits / architecture technology by:

1. increasing the number of research assistants and students interested on these topics;
2. organizing course work on photonic-based materials, and training seminars/workshops;
3. initiating purchase of key software utilized in research both faculty members and students, and
4. performing innovative research on topics such as (a) ultra-narrow linewidth optical filter, (b) cascade resonator-induced transparency -based photonic devices, and (c) others for distributed sensing and communications. This will lead to 2 journals and 1 conference papers, and year-round productive research efforts.