Small Planet Photonics

Wide Dynamic Range Optical Detectors

Wide Dynamic Range

Our SmartDetectors™ offer six decades of gain change that is designed to be controlled automatically by our ultra-fast, glitch-free autoranging system, and can also be set manually through the RS-232 setup interface. Such wide dynamic range is particularly useful in applications where signal changes by many orders of magnitude, such as automated fiber alignment.

Wide dynamic range also makes SmartDetector™ a versatile tool that can replace a number of optical detectors with different fixed gains and removes the need to know expected signal level before the start of a measurement. In fact, looking could not be easier, because the detector adjusts the gain from the maximum when looking for first light to a lower gain value when there is more signal.

When alignment is finished the detector scale setting can be fixed and it can be used as a regular amplified photodiode. However, consider the benefit of the increased dynamic range with the autoranging left on. A fixed gain detector and a 16-bit DAQ combination only has a factor of 30 dynamic range, assuming a factor of two to avoid clipping and factor of 1,000 for digital 0.1% accuracy. Leaving the autoranging on add six more decades to the dynamic range. In fact a 12-bit DAQ with autoranging on has significantly more dynamic range than a 16-bit DAQ with a fixed gain detector