Interferometric retroreflecting sensor system
AssigneeThe Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
InventorsOlav SOLGAARD, Anne Rebecca KROO
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Abstract
A retroreflecting sensor includes a corner cube retroreflector having three mutually orthogonal reflective surfaces. A sensor element is disposed on at least a portion of one of the reflective surfaces. The sensor element modulates a phase and/or an amplitude of incident light as a function of a measurand so that when illuminated by incident light, a diffraction pattern is reflected to a remote optical imaging device configured to capture and analyze the diffraction pattern to extract measurement data associated with the measurand.
Claims20
A method of sensing a measurand, comprising;
- illuminating with light a corner cube retroreflecting sensor, the corner cube retroreflecting sensor having three mutually orthogonal reflective surfaces and a sensor element disposed on at least a portion of one of the reflective surfaces;
- receiving a diffraction pattern formed by retroreflective light retroreflected from the corner cube retroreflecting sensor;
- and
- analyzing the diffraction pattern to extract phase and/or amplitude changes induced by the sensor element, wherein the phase and/or amplitude changes correspond to a value of the measurand.
A retroreflecting sensor, comprising:
- a corner cube retroreflector having three mutually orthogonal reflective surfaces;
- a sensor element disposed on at least a portion of one of the reflective surfaces, wherein the sensor element modulates a phase and/or an amplitude of incident light as a function of a measurand so that when illuminated by incident light, a diffraction pattern is reflected to a remote optical imaging device configured to capture and analyze the diffraction pattern to extract measurement data associated with the measurand.
A sensing system, comprising:
- a retroreflector having three mutually orthogonal reflective surfaces forming a corner cube geometry;
- a sensor pattern disposed on at least a portion of one of the reflective surfaces, the sensor pattern being configured to modify at least one of phase or amplitude of incident coherent light in response to a measurand;
- a light source configured to emit coherent illumination toward the retroreflector;
- and
- a detector configured to capture a diffraction pattern of the retroreflected light, wherein the diffraction pattern contains information indicative of the measurand based on optical interaction with the sensor pattern.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.