Applying an active intravascular MR catheter device that allows signal transmission from the catheter tip requires special means to avoid radiofrequency-induced heating. This article presents a novel, miniaturized all-optical active MR probe to use with real-time MRI in minimally invasive interventions for catheter guidance and intravascular imaging. An optical link transmits the received MR si...

We transfer an optical frequency over 251 km of optical fiber with a residual instability of 6x10(-19) at 100 s. This instability and the associated timing jitter are limited fundamentally by the noise on the optical fiber and the link length. We give a simple expression for calculating the achievable instability and jitter over a fiber link. Transfer of optical stability over this long distanc...

Optical fiber links have become ubiquitous for links at the metropolitan and wide area distance scales, and have become common alternatives to electrical links in local area networks and cluster networks. As optical technology improves and link frequencies continue to increase, optical links will be increasingly considered for shorter, higher-bandwidth links such as I/O, memory, and system bus ...

We report an optical link on silicon using micrometer-scale ring-resonator enhanced silicon modulators and waveguide-integrated germanium photodetectors. We show 3 Gbps operation of the link with 0.5 V modulator voltage swing and 1.0 V detector bias. The total energy consumption for such a link is estimated to be approximately 120 fJ/bit. Such a compact and low power monolithic link is an essen...

Optical communications can provide high-data-rate telemetry from deep-space probes with subsystems that have lower mass, consume less power, and are smaller than their radio frequency (RF) counterparts. However, because optical communication is more affected by weather than is RF communication, it requires groundstation site diversity to mitigate the adverse effects of inclement weather on the ...

Direct measurements of optical characteristics of a deployed optical interconnect is difficult. We present here a technique that enables the extraction and modeling of some of the channel's optoelectronic characteristics by direct measurement of its end-to-end electrical performance. This technique can greatly facilitate the optimization of optical link transceivers by providing a realistic mod...