Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an atmospheric trace gas; therefore its accurate sensing is of great interest. Optical sensors exploiting the midinfrared (mid-IR) light absorption of CO2 provide high sensitivity and are widely used in medical diagnostics, atmospheric monitoring, remote sensing, and industrial applications. In this work, we demonstrated accurate CO2 gas sensing at a 4.2-μm wavelength. In addition, detecting the weak mid-IR molecular absorption bands of gases at low concentrations requires using increased optical path lengths. The most obvious method that can expand the potential beam path in a spectroscopic system is to use a longer linear gas cell, which in some situations may be adequate; however, space and volume requirements need to be considered. A circular multireflection (CMR) cell was used to reflect the radiation back and forth through the sample medium multiple times, thus greatly reducing the size footprint compared with a linear cell of equivalent optical path length. A CMR cell was designed and constructed to allow for multireflections within the cell. The optical alignment of the cell and the convenience of changing the optical path length by adjusting its position with respect to the incident light beam were also used to maximize the advantages of the device. The cell has an inner diameter of 6.5 cm, and the path length can reach up to 123.5 cm, which is equivalent to 19 beam passes of reflections. This work will be used as the groundwork for designing an instrument for the high-resolution measurement of CO2 gas in planetary atmospheres.
More sophisticated non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) sensors for gas analysis have been developed in recent years, with many references in the literature. This technique is one of the most cost-effective methods to quantify the concentration of a target gas by measuring its absorption of infrared radiation. Dual channel thermopiles comprised of target and reference filter channels are reliably used to monitor the target gas for NDIR sensors. In recent years, commercial off-the-shelf quad-channel thermopiles with integrated passband infrared absorption filters have become available and enable up to three gas mixture detection and quantification, but there is no truly parallel readout circuit available for signal post processing. These sensors with their high sensitivity, fast response time and no cooling requirement makes them ideal candidates for applications that require monitoring multiple gases in real time. Usually, an NDIR sensor uses a cost-effective micro-controller for signal post processing, this limits the monitoring of multiple gases to a serial readout architecture. In this paper, we present a proof-of-concept non-dispersive infrared-red (NDIR) gas analyzer that has been realized with a quad-channel thermopile and a parallel readout circuitry consisting of a multi-channel digitizer (MCD) application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and a field programmable gate array (FPGA). The parallel readout architecture will help considerably in the calibration schema. The NDIR gas analyzer will be used in a future space-based instrument application to ensure the safe transfer of sublimated volatiles from a comet sample containment system to a gas containment system within the operational pressure-temperature condition.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an atmospheric trace gas, and its accurate sensing is therefore of great interest. Optical sensors exploiting the mid-infrared (mid-IR) light absorption of CO2 provide high sensitivity and are widely used in medical diagnostics, atmospheric monitoring, remote sensing, and industrial applications. In this work, we demonstrated an accurate CO2 gas sensing at 4.2 µm wavelength. In addition, detecting the weak mid-IR molecular absorption bands of gases at low concentrations requires increasing optical path lengths to be used. The most obvious method that can expand the potential beam path in a spectroscopic system is to use a longer linear gas cell, which in some situations may be adequate; however, space and volume requirements need to be considered. In this work, a circular multi reflection (CMR) cell was used to reflect the radiation back and forth through the sample medium multiple times, thus greatly reducing the size footprint compared to a linear cell of equivalent optical path length. A CMR cell was designed and constructed to allow multi-reflections within the cell. The optical alignment of the cell and the convenience of changing the optical path length by adjusting its position with respect to the incident light beam were also used to maximize the advantages of the device. This work will be used as the groundwork for designing an instrument for the high-resolution measurement of CO2 gas in planetary atmospheres.
With the rapid advancement of imaging technology, space-based remote sensing instruments are becoming more sophisticated and are producing substantially more amounts of data for downloading. Data alteration is very likely to occur during the transmission over the long distances from probes to carrier spacecraft and subsequently back to Earth,. Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) is the most well-known data package error check technique which has been used in many applications. Unfortunately, due to its serial computation process, it could be a bottleneck for critical applications that require rapid processing. To overcome such issue, we present here a parallel CRC computational method based on an FPGA with simulation and testing to validate the methodology.
Mid-infrared (IR) laser spectroscopy is broadly used to study trace gas species in medical diagnostics, atmospheric monitoring, remote sensing, and industrial applications. Its capability to measure fundamental rovibrational bands due to the chemical functional groups in the most relevant gas molecules allows for high instrumental sensitivity. In this work, we used a target mid-IR wavelength laser diode to measure the concentration of CO2 gas. In addition, detecting the weak mid-IR molecular absorption bands of gases like CO2 at low concentrations requires increasing optical path lengths to be used. There are a number of methods that can potentially be used to lengthen the beam path in a spectroscopic system; the most obvious being to use a longer linear gas cell, which in some situations may suffice; however, space and volume requirements need to be considered. In this work, we used a circular multi-reflection (CMR) cell, which reflects the radiation back and forth through the sample medium multiple times greatly reducing the footprint size compared to a linear cell of equivalent path length. A CMR cell is designed and constructed so that it allows multi-reflections within the cell. The optical alignment of the cell and the convenience of changing the optical path length by adjusting its position with respect to the entering light beam are key advantages. This work will be used as the groundwork for designing an instrument for high-resolution measurement of gas abundances in planetary atmospheres.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) has successfully developed and tested a custom-designed low-noise multi-channel digitizer (MCD) application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for operation in harsh radiation environments. The MCD-ASIC is optimized for low-frequency and low-voltage signal measurements from sensors and transducers. It has 20 input channels where each channel is comprised of auto-zeroed chopper variable-gain amplifier, post amplifier, and a second order ΣΔ modulator. ΣΔ analog-to-digital converter (ADC) relies on oversampling and noise shaping to achieve high-resolution conversion. However, the MCD-ASIC requires digital filtering and decimation to convert the output single bit streams from the ADC to useful data words. A parallel digital platform such as a field-programmable-gate-array (FPGA) is highly suitable to fully leverage the capabilities of the MCD-ASIC. The FPGA controls the MCD-ASIC via serial peripheral interface (SPI) protocol and acquires data from it. A Python-script communicates with the FPGA board through a USB interface on a cross operating platform. Using this architecture, the system is capable of monitoring up to 20 voltage readout channels simultaneously in a real-time manner. Each channel’s parameters can be programmed independently allowing maximum user versatility. In this paper, we present analysis of the analog front-end, the implementation of the digital processing unit on the FPGA, and provide noise performance results from the MCD-ASIC readout.
Gas Abundance Sensor Package (GASP) is a stand-alone scientific instrument that has the capability to measure the concentration of target gases based on a non-dispersive infrared sensor system along with atmospheric reference parameters. The main objective of this work is to develop a GASP system which takes advantage of available technologies and off-the-shelf components to provide a cost-effective solution for localized sampling of gas concentrations. GASP will enable scientists to study the atmosphere and will identify the conditions of the target’s planetary local environment. Moreover, due to a recent trend of miniaturization of electronic components and thermopiles detectors, a small size and robust instrument with a reduction in power consumption is developed in this work. This allows GASP to be easily integrated into a variety of small space vehicles such as CubeSats or small satellite system, especially the Micro-Reentry Capsule (MIRCA) prototype vehicle. This prototype is one of the most advanced concepts of small satellites that has the capability to survive the rapid dive into the atmosphere of a planet. In this paper, a fully-operational instrument system will be developed and tested in the laboratory environment as well as flight preparation for a field test of the instrument suite will be described.
Interferometric based techniques are often used for 3D quantitative phase imaging. While these techniques are sensitive to vibrations, non-interferometric intensity based techniques such as the transport of intensity equation (TIE) do not suffer from such a drawback. Phase reconstruction of phase objects using TIE technique is accomplished by recording several diffraction patterns at different observation planes through axially translating the CCD. In this paper, we purpose to use a spatial light modulator (SLM) in a modified 4f TIE optical setup to acquire 3D tomographic images of phase objects. This modified setup will reduce the acquisition time dramatically making the TIE technique useful for dynamic events such as biological samples. We illustrate how 3D phase objects can be reconstructed tomographically by constructing a rotating mechanism for the sample. At each angle of rotation, two diffraction patterns are captured by the CCD either sequentially or instantaneously with the help of a reference mirror. The reconstructed optical fields are tomographically recomposed to yield the final 3D shape using a tomographic backprojection technique. Finally, a reconfigurable hardware controlled by a GUI is employed to synchronize the CCD, the SLM and the rotating stage.
In this paper, we present detail analysis and a step-by-step implementation of an optimized fringe projection profilometry (FPP) based 3D shape measurement system. First, we propose a multi-frequency and multi-phase shifting sinusoidal fringe pattern reconstruction approach to increase accuracy and sensitivity of the system. Second, phase error compensation caused by the nonlinear transfer function of the projector and camera is performed through polynomial approximation. Third, phase unwrapping is performed using spatial and temporal techniques and the tradeoff between processing speed and high accuracy is discussed in details. Fourth, generalized camera and system calibration are developed for phase to real world coordinate transformation. The calibration coefficients are estimated accurately using a reference plane and several gauge blocks with precisely known heights and by employing a nonlinear least square fitting method. Fifth, a texture will be attached to the height profile by registering a 2D real photo to the 3D height map. The last step is to perform 3D image fusion and registration using an iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm for a full field of view reconstruction. The system is experimentally constructed using compact, portable, and low cost off-the-shelf components. A MATLAB® based GUI is developed to control and synchronize the whole system.
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