ARL 23-11
Updated
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File name: ARL 23-11.pdf
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Invention Disclosure
ARL 23-11
TITLE OF INVENTION:Passive optical retro reflective identification tagging for optical positioning
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OVERVIEW:
(The purpose of this overview is to provide a brief summarized overview of the invention as described in this invention disclosure document and a direct explanation on what is new about the invention and information about potential military and commercial uses)
1. What is this Invention?
(e.g., a short 3-sentence “summarized” description as a more “detailed” description will be required further into this invention disclosure)
It is a completely passive optical retro reflective identification tagging device made by multiple optical metasurface layers atop a retroreflective layer for the application of free-space optical positioning, navigation, and timing as well as object identification, locating, and tracking. 2. What is the basic premise of the design?
A thin retro-reflective device created by a two-dimensional array of subwavelength structures provides a unique spectral signature to the reflected optical signal. The main idea is to create barcode-like patterns in the frequency domain using the engineered high-frequency electromagnetic response and the angularly-stable features of a new type of artificial optical materials, namely nonlocal metasurfaces. In this design, an optical transmitter/receiver device will be used to interrogate this passive retroreflecting device for tracking and identification. In operation, the information code can made by both frequency modulation and intensity modulation in time, so it can be received in either frequency domain or time domain.
3. What is new about this Invention?
The existing passive tagging devices operate with RF microwave signals, which are subject to various security threats such as jamming, sniffing, spoofing, and eavesdropping, and have limitations on resolution. The proposed optical bar-coding tagging technology relies on a highlydirectional optical beam for the communication between the transmitter and the retro-reflective tag, which will greatly reduce the security risks of the conventional RF-based tagging technologies. The novel aspects of this invention include 1) the technical approach to create barcode-like patterns in the frequency domain using thin dielectric films, 2) the retroreflective tags do not require a battery and are completely passive, 3) the operation range of this device can be few kilometers, much longer than that of existing RF-based systems, 4) a large number of unique spectral
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