Tomographic imaging of carbon dioxide in the exhaust plume of large commercial aero-engines.

We report here the first implementation of chemically specific imaging in the exhaust plume of a gas turbine typical of those used for propulsion in commercial aircraft. The method used is chemical species tomography (CST) and the target species is CO2, absorbing in the near-infrared at 1999.4 nm. A total of 126 beams propagate transverse to the plume axis, along 7 m paths in a coplanar geometry, to probe a central region of diameter ≈1.5m. The CO2 absorption spectrum is measured using tunable diode laser spectroscopy with wavelength modulation, using the second harmonic to first harmonic (2f/1f) ratio method. The engine is operated over the full range of thrust, while data are recorded in a quasi-simultaneous mode at frame rates of 1.25 and 0.3125 Hz. Various data inversion methodologies are considered and presented for image reconstruction. At all thrust levels a persistent ring structure of high CO2 concentration is observed in the central region of the measurement plane, with a raised region in the middle of the plume assumed to be due to the engine's boat tail. With its potential to target various exhaust species, the CST method outlined here offers a new approach to turbine combustion research, turbine engine development, and aviation fuel research and development.

Ten gigabits per second 16-level quadrature amplitude modulated millimeter-wave carrier generation using dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulators incorporated photonic-vector modulator.

A novel photonic-vector modulator architecture for the generation of 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16 QAM) millimeter-wave carriers using dual-drive Mach-Zehnder modulators is proposed. Experimental generation of 5 Gbits/s 4 amplitude shift-keying (4 ASK) and 10 Gbits/s 16 QAM modulated 42 GHz carriers is reported. The multilevel modulated millimeter-wave signals are demodulated using an electrical receiver and its error-vector magnitude (EVM) estimated from the measurements, obtaining EVMs of -21.04 and -18.33 dB for 4 ASK and 16 QAM modulation formats, respectively.

Generation of pure electrical quadrature amplitude modulation with photonic vector modulator.

A photonic vector modulator architecture for generating pure quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals is presented. An electrical quadrature-modulated signal at microwave-millimeter-wave frequencies is generated from its corresponding baseband in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) components. In the proposed scheme, no electrical devices apart from the electrical tone oscillator are needed in the generation process. In addition, the purity of the generated signal is increased, and the hardware requirements are reduced when compared with previously proposed architectures so a highly compact low-cost architecture can be implemented. A pure 1.25 Gbit/s 4-QAM signal has been experimentally generated at a 42 GHz carrier frequency.