In this Section
Members Area
Members Area
SOA organises OFS-20
Thirty-two companies took part in the exhibition which was run in parallel with the conference. The exhibition was open for two days – the Wednesday and Thursday - of the week long conference. The picture shows the great interest shown by the delegates in the exhibition. The flow of delegates visiting the exhibition was mainly during the tea/coffee breaks and lunch times.
In addition an Exhibition Reception was held on Wednesday evening immediately after the last conference session of the day. This allowed delegates not only more access to the exhibition but also everyone enjoyed a networking opportunity. Exhibitor reaction to the interest shown by the delegates was extremely positive and the exhibitor organiser SOA has received numerous expressions of satisfaction with the enquiries lodged and organisation of the exhibition. In one case an exhibitor volunteered that his company received more enquiries then they had at Photonex 2008. SOA found the exhibitor reactions extremely pleasing especially as they had pointed out in their pre-event publicity that the academic sector buying power had not been as affected as some markets during the credit crunch. SOA is currently organising the exhibition which will be held during Photon10 at University of Southampton in August 2010.
The International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors was first held in London, in 1983. It has become established as the leading forum for all research into optical fibre and guided wave optical systems for instrumentation, sensing and imaging, and their applications in physical, chemical and biological measurement. The conference is held approximately every eighteen months, rotating between the Americas, Europe, and Asia and the Pacific. In 2009, it was held at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. The conference will be held in association with the Optics and Photonics Division of the Institute of Physics and co-sponsored by the SPIE and OSA. The conference has now passed its first quarter-century and shows every sign of growing in popularity. Over 400 participants attended, with 250 papers from nearly 40 countries presented. Today’s OFS community has access to optical fibres covering a far greater range of wavelength and with precisely controlled dispersion characteristics; micro-structured components provide even greater versatility and control, for example via the many forms of available gratings, or entirely different types of ‘photonic crystal’ fibres. Sources at almost any wavelength and bandwidth are available, and optical signals are easily amplified within fibres. The potential advantages cited 25 years ago for fibre sensors have now become an engineering reality, most notably sensitivity and specificity, dense multiplexing, and safety and reliability—in fact, multiplexing and long-term reliability are emerging as probably the most important attributes of all. A special feature of optical fibre sensors is their ability to provide distributed sensing, which represents the most extreme case of multiplexing, with some projecting that distributed systems will represent the majority of the market. Despite the stimulus of new technology, arguably the major reason for the continuing significance and popularity of our subject is its relevance to the important problems of the world today: fibre sensors are actively deployed in the search for new energy supplies, in the generation and distribution of electricity, in energy storage, in efficient use of energy, in monitoring our environment whether natural or engineered, in maintaining the civil infrastructure, in transport systems, and in improving the efficiency of manufacturing. Perhaps some of the most exciting developments are at the interface with the life sciences, where optical fibre sensors are an essential component of the new subject of ‘bio-photonics’ as a vital tool in research in biochemistry and medicine.