Photonics Design and Remote Sensing

Overview

Abstract

This tutorial series will include:

Seminar 1 (Monday, 2PM) – Electromagnetic Numerical Modeling

A general view of electromagnetic numerical modeling. Finite Element Method (FEM) vs Finite Difference Method. FEM formulations for solving Maxwell equations: time-domain and frequencydomain. Scattering, resonant structures and guiding modeling. Description of NEO-PZ: LEMAC’s electromagnetic simulator package. Challenging electromagnetic problems: very large electrical spatial domains demanding very high localized accuracy. Deterministic and heuristic optimization techniques and artificial intelligence approaches. Photonics, THz, millimeter wave and microwave examples.

Seminar 2a (Tuesday, 9:30 AM) – Integrated Photonics – Communications

A general view of waveguiding and wireless integrated photonics. Design and experimental aspects including artificial intelligence approaches. Waveguiding coupling. Fiber-to-Chip Couplers. Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) integrated waveguides. Nanoantennas and metasurfaces applications. Beamforming for LIDAR and high-rate free-space communications: down and up links.

Seminar 2b (Tuesday, 9:30 AM) – Integrated Photonics – Sensors

A general view of integrated photonics sensors emphasizing its high sensitivity in comparison with other technologies. Design and experimental aspects including artificial intelligence approaches. Integrated photonics transducers: full-dielectric and plasmonic solutions. Multimode approaches. Also: optical fiber based plasmonic distributed sensing. Applications in biotechnology (cancer and troponin detections) and environmental applications (water quality tests). Non-bio applications: gases detection (Hydrogen). 

Seminar 3 (Wednesday, 9:30 AM)– Drone-Borne Radars – Technology and Applications A general view of Radars.

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) drone-borne (DB) technology: hardware and software. Image processing and artificial intelligence approaches. Mono and bi-static approaches. The drone’s trajectory: new SAR degree-of-freedom. New SAR frontier: underground tomography. Non-invasive applications: precision agriculture (moisture mapping, soil classification, growth and harvesting predictions, root and tuber crops monitoring, carbon stock measurement, ant-nests and beaver burrows’ detection, insect plagues’ detection, forest inventory, etc.); environment (groundwater identification); natural disasters (earthquake early alert); mining (subsidence and environmental monitoring), oil and gas (leakage), transmission lines and hydroelectric monitoring; archeology (ancient civilization ruins’ detection); and others. 

Seminar 4 (Thursday, 9:30 AM) – Innovation and entrepreneurial aspects 

Products that can be exploited as entrepreneur activities aiming the generation of successful spinoffs: electromagnetic commercial package (may be oriented to specific photonics, THz, or microwave design simulations); Integrated LIDAR; Integrated Photonics Beamforming; Integrated Photonics Sensors (may be low-cost disposable solutions); and SAR systems and solutions. Brief presentation of RADAZ, LEMAC’s spinoff, which manufactures and commercializes a three-band SAR-DB system, a unique product in the global market. Different partnership schemes with RADAZ will be discussed, including its possible incubation in the KAUST’s technology park. The development of SAR processing software for novel specific applications in conjunction with RADAZ’s SAR-DB system, together (hardware + software) may constitute new products, whose commercialization may be carried out through the creation of spinoff companies. All these and other commercial aspects will be discussed in this seminar.   

Brief Biography

Hugo Enrique Hernandez Figueroa completed his PhD from Imperial College London (1992) and carried out postdoctoral activities at University College London (1993-1995). He is a full professor at UNICAMP (2005), Brazil, head of the Applied and Computational Electromagnetics Lab (LEMAC), and the director of the Brazilian Science and Technology Lab for Photonics Communications (FOTONICOM). He is an OPTICA (formerly OSA) Fellow, and a senior member of IEEE and SPIE. His work is focused on the R&D of photonics and microwaves devices applied to telecommunications and biotechnology. He has published more than 145 papers in reputed journals and serving as an editorial board member of Journal of IEEE/OPTICA Lightwave and Technology, IEEE Photonics Journal, and IEEE Journal of Selected Topics on Quantum Electronics. He has also served as general chair of a number of international conferences and has delivered almost one hundred invited talks worldwide. Presently he serves as a member of the IEEE Photonics Society Publications Council (2022-2024).

ResearchID: F-4692-2015 / ORCiD: 0000-0003-2419-6979