Photonic designs drive new application areas
Sensors are an essential interface that connects the world of electronics with external reality. Designing sensors to bridge that gap can be a daunting task, intertwining digital and analog electronics with physics and chemistry. A sensor element could be a fragment of DNA on an electrode, a potential well on a silicon chip, a pressure transducer or a MEMS-based accelerometer. Once the physical system has been designed, extracting information from the resulting signal becomes the task of the electronics engineer. Noise must be characterized and removed, and circuits or software that interpret the remaining information need to be designed. Often high-performance DSPs and complex expert-systems software are brought to bear on the task.