Proposal Number:          21-1- T8.07-1794

          

          

   

Subtopic Title:
      Photonic Integrated Circuits

          

          

   

Proposal Title:
      Photonic Integrated Microwave Spectrometer for Hyperspectral Sounding

          

          

   

Firm:

          

Freedom Photonics, LLC

          

   

Address:

          

41 Aero Camino, Santa Barbara, CA 93117 - 3104

          

   

Phone:

          

(805) 967-4900                                                                                                                                                                                

          

   

Name:

          

Purdue University-Main Campus

          

   

Address:

          

155 South Grant Street, IN 47907 - 2114

          

   

Phone:

          

(765) 494-6204                                                                                                                                                                                

          

   

Name:

          

Steven Estrella

          

   

E-mail:

          

steven@freedomphotonics.com

          

   

Address:

          

41 Aero Camino, CA 93117 - 3104

          

   

Phone:

          

(805) 967-4900                                                                                                                                                                                

          

   

Name:

          

Daniel Renner

          

   

E-mail:

          

drenner@freedomphotonics.com

          

   

Address:

          

41 Aero Camino, CA 93117 - 3104

          

   

Phone:

          

(805) 967-4900                                                                                                                                                                                

          

   

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) :                                                                                                                                                          
Begin: 2
End: 3

          

          

     

Technical Abstract (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words):

Understanding the behavior of our planet’s atmosphere and its interaction with the surface (i.e. the planetary boundary layer) is key to developing accurate weather and climate models, which impacts many sectors of global society, including agriculture, transportation/logistics, health/medical, financial, and manufacturing/technology. Hyperspectral microwave sounding is a powerful method for analyzing the vertical temperature and moisture profiles of the lower atmosphere, with high precision. Current hyperspectral microwave sounding implementations on satellite systems include bulky, heavy, and inefficient radio frequency instruments, which impacts the science mission in terms of duration, global coverage, accuracy / resolution, and cost. By utilizing advanced photonic integrated circuit technology many of the traditional radio frequency components formulating the spectrometer architecture can be replaced by smaller, lighter, and higher functioning photonic components, which can be integrated into a small chip and packaged into a relatively small module. Such a photonic integrated microwave spectrometer (PIMS) can reduce the size, weight and consumed power (SWaP) by a factor >100X, while simultaneously providing increased center frequency range and narrower frequency channel spacing, for increased sounding resolution and accuracy. Freedom Photonics LLC and Purdue University intend to develop and demonstrate the critical photonic elements of a PIMS device, to enable the NASA science mission for hyperspectral microwave sounding and investigation of Earths planetary boundary layer.

          

          

     

Potential NASA Applications (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words):

RF / Microwave spectrometers on a chip, for Earth, planetary, and astrophysics science missions on the ground and in space; RF / Microwave signal processing; antenna remoting; ultra-stable and tunable RF / microwave local oscillator generation 

          

          

     

Potential Non-NASA Applications (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words):

High-speed optical data communications; electronic warfare (EW); signals intelligence (SIGINT); antenna remoting

          

          

     

Duration:     13