Optical Systems Engineering (4 units). This class provides opportunities for students to learn practical engineering skills for developing optical systems. Students will work in groups on engineering projects and case studies that provide the opportunity to learn systems engineering skills first-hand. Some examples of optical applications that may be covered are imaging, spectroscopy, illumination, adaptive optics, communication, detection, and metrology. These systems will be used to teach fundamentals of systems engineering, optical system design, quantifying performance for optical systems, specification of optical components, and professional engineering skills.

This Course is intended for graduate students who have completed three semesters or more or undergrad students in their senior year. Please contact the instructor if you are not sure if you should take this course.

Meeting Times:
This class meets for three 75 minute sessions per week. Students must enroll in both lecture and laboratory components.

Grading:
Grades will be based on participation (25%), homework (25%), technical reports (25%), and presentations (25%). Undergraduate students have fewer assignments and their role in the groups will be less substantive.

Topics to be covered:

Systems Engineering fundamentals

• Establishing requirements
• Systematic design, applied to requirements
• Risk management
• Quality control, reliability

Optical system design

• First order architecture studies
• Creative design
• Trade studies (performance, cost, schedule, risk)
• Detailed design and analysis
• Tolerancing
• Manufacturing issues
• Integration and testing

Quantifying system performance for optical systems

• Image quality metrics
• Sensitivity
• SNR
• Spectral resolving power
• ROC curves
• Temporal bandwidth

Procurement of optical components and systems

• Specification of optics
• Specification of coatings
• Practical selection of detectors and focal planes
• Sources and illumination
• Electronic interfacing

Professional skills

• Technical writing
• Technical presentations
• Working as part of a team
• Development of proposals
• Engineering decision making
• Intellectual property
• Introductory project management
• Introductory finance
• Career planning

Special Topics

• Stray light (effect on performance and methods of controlling it)
• Illumination – etendue
• Infrared systems

Possible optical systems used as design projects and case studies

• Machine vision
• Custom metrology system
• Infrared detection
• Free space communication
• Spectrograph
• Adaptive optics