In-vitro platform to study ultrasound as source for wireless energy transfer and communication for implanted medical devices.

A platform to study ultrasound as a source for wireless energy transfer and communication for implanted medical devices is described. A tank is used as a container for a pair of electroacoustic transducers, where a control unit is fixed to one wall of the tank and a transponder can be manually moved in three axes and rotate using a mechanical system. The tank is filled with water to allow acoustic energy and data transfer, and the system is optimized to avoid parasitic effects due to cables, reflection paths and cross talk problems. A printed circuit board is developed to test energy scavenging such that enough acoustic intensity is generated by the control unit to recharge a battery loaded to the transponder. In the same manner, a second printed circuit board is fabricated to study transmission of information through acoustic waves.

Superheterodyne configuration for two-wavelength interferometry applied to absolute distance measurement.

We present a new superheterodyne technique for long-distance measurements by two-wavelength interferometry (TWI). While conventional systems use two acousto-optic modulators to generate two different heterodyne frequencies, here the two frequencies result from synchronized sweeps of optical and radio frequencies. A distributed feedback laser source is injected in an intensity modulator that is driven at the half-wave voltage mode. A radio-frequency signal is applied to this intensity modulator to generate two optical sidebands around the optical carrier. This applied radio frequency consists of a digital ramp between 13 and 15 GHz, with 1 ms duration and with an accuracy of better than 1 ppm. Simultaneously, the laser source is frequency modulated by a current modulation that is synchronized on the radio-frequency ramp as well as on a triangle waveform. These two frequency-swept optical signals at the output of the modulator illuminate a Michelson interferometer and create two distinct distance-dependent heterodyne frequencies on the photodetector. The superheterodyne signal is then detected and bandpass filtered to retrieve the absolute distance measurement. Experiments between 1 and 15 m confirm the validity of this new concept, leading to a distance accuracy of +/- 50 microm for a 1 ms acquisition time.

Radio frequency controlled synthetic wavelength sweep for absolute distance measurement by optical interferometry.

We present a new technique applied to the variable optical synthetic wavelength generation in optical interferometry. It consists of a chain of optical injection locking among three lasers: first a distributed-feedback laser is used as a master to injection lock an intensity-modulated laser that is directly modulated around 15 GHz by a radio frequency generator on a sideband. A second distributed-feedback laser is injection locked on another sideband of the intensity-modulated laser. The variable synthetic wavelength for absolute distance measurement is simply generated by sweeping the radio frequency over a range of several hundred megahertz, which corresponds to the locking range of the two slave lasers. In this condition, the uncertainty of the variable synthetic wavelength is equivalent to the radio frequency uncertainty. This latter has a relative accuracy of 10(-7) or better, resulting in a resolution of +/-25 microm for distances exceeding tens of meters. The radio frequency generator produces a linear frequency sweep of 1 ms duration (i.e., exactly equal to one absolute distance measurement acquisition time), with frequency steps of about 1 MHz. Finally, results of absolute distance measurements for ranges up to 10 m are presented.