NASA STTR 2009 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (SBC):		RESEARCH INSTITUTION (RI):
NAME:	ADVR, Inc.	NAME:	Stanford University
STREET:	2310 University Way, Building 1	STREET:	Office of Sponsored Research, 340 Panama St. MC 4100
CITY:	Bozeman	CITY:	Stanford
STATE/ZIP:	MT  59715 - 6504	STATE/ZIP:	CA  94305 - 4100
PHONE:	(406) 522-0388	PHONE:	(650) 725-6864

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Philip Battle
battle@advr-inc.com

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at beginning and end of contract:
Begin: 2
End: 3

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
This NASA Phase I STTR effort will establish the feasibility of developing a compact broadband near to mid-IR programmable optical comb for use in laser based remote sensing and communications. The comb generator will use a waveguide-based optical parametric gain block technology that can have ultra wideband (>250nm) operation with very high gain (>25dB) in a very compact footprint. This approach is enabled by advances both in waveguide processing and in substrate growth, which allows for fabrication of complex waveguide structures to be formed in commercially available large-diameter nonlinear optical substrates. Optical comb sources are increasing the achievable sensitivity and system performance for a range of applications including gas sensing, optical communications, frequency metrology, precision spectroscopy and optical coherence tomography and thus directly addresses NASA's mission to advance remote sensing measurements to improve the scientific understanding of the Earth specified in 2009 STTR call: T4.01 Lidar, Radar and Passive Microwave.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Integrated waveguide components play a key role in many NASA systems. Multi-element components such as quasi-phase matching and phase modulation are efficient approaches for laser doubling and would be suitable for iodine locking (ACE) and O2 detection (ASCENDS). Additionally, the Parametric Gain block itself can be used to generate 3-5μm communications signals derived from 1550nm communications signals through parametric amplification, which would be beneficial to Free-Space Optical Communications at the Optical Communications Group at JPL. Finally, the compact programmable optical comb would be useful for advanced remote technology for precision spectroscopy and remote sensing of trace gas.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Enabling features of the proposed technology include an all-fiber footprint with fast, reconfigurable capability for arbitrary frequency grid synthesis in both the near and mid-IR spectral regions. Potential commercial applications include gas sensing, precision spectroscopy, frequency metrology, monitoring and optimization of combustion processes, multi-channel source for fiber and free space communication systems, medical diagnostics such as spectroscopy-based disease diagnosis and optical coherence tomography.

NASA's technology taxonomy has been developed by the SBIR-STTR program to disseminate awareness of proposed and awarded R/R&D in the agency. It is a listing of over 100 technologies, sorted into broad categories, of interest to NASA.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING

Laser Optical Optical & Photonic Materials Photonics RF