Revision of the Atmospheric Modeling for SNR Observations in Ground-Based GNSS Reflectometry

The application of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) observations from ground-based GNSS Reflectometry is becoming an operational tool for coastal sea-level altimetry. As in all data analyses, systematic influences must be reduced here too, to achieve reliable results. A prominent influence results from atmospheric refraction. Different approaches exist to describe or to correct for this influence. In our contribution we will revise the latest developments and suggest a simple atmospheric interferometric delay model that takes into account ray bending as well as along-path propagation delay. The model takes into account a spherical reflector and can therefore be applied for data from very low elevation angles, too. The findings are double-checked by numerical experiments based on a step-by-step raytracing procedure.

Highly Sensitive Temperature Sensing Performance of a Microfiber Fabry-Perot Interferometer with Sealed Micro-Spherical Reflector

A temperature probe has been proposed by inserting a microfiber taper into a silica hollow core fiber with a microsphere end. The sealed air cavity in the microsphere and the inserted microfiber acted as the two reflectors of a Fabry-Perot interferometer, respectively. The contribution of both microfiber diameter and cavity length on the interference spectra was analyzed and discussed in detail. The temperature change was experimentally determined by monitoring the wavelength location of the special resonance dip. By filling the air cavity with poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a high temperature sensitivity of 3.90 nm/°C was experimentally demonstrated. This temperature probe with the diameter of 150 μm and length of 10 mm will be a promising candidate for exploring the miniature or implantable sensors.

A Practical Method to Design Reflector-Based Light-Emitting Diode Luminaire for General Lighting

A reflector-based light-emitting diode (LED) luminaire structure that can achieve a large cut-off angle for general lighting is presented in this work. The proposed lighting unit mainly consists of a spherical reflector and a primary packaging lens that contains an aspheric surface and a spherical surface. The light rays emitted from the LED light source are well controlled by the spherical reflector and the aspheric surface of the lens for the purpose of obtaining a uniform illumination on the target surface. Both the ideal Lambertian LED and non-Lambertian LED light sources were employed to validate the proposed structure and the performance of the designed lighting units was analyzed by optical simulation. The results show that the light utilization efficiencies and the estimated uniformities are 92.96% and 91.11% for ideal Lambertian LED-based lighting unit and 93.31% and 91.64% for non-Lambertian LED-based lighting unit, respectively. Further analysis shows that the tolerances of horizontal, vertical, and rotational deviation of the both lighting units were about 2.0 mm, 1.0 mm, and 1.0°, respectively.