about.

in three sentences:

Tethir is bringing major developments in optical technology to a number of fields.  It has a toolkit of optical designs that can be applied in various ways to make a significant impact on the performance of devices across a range of applications.  Tethir's team has expertise in optical design, photodiodes, signal processing, full system design and advanced manufacturing.  

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in The toolkit(examples):

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The pyramidal lens:

Pyramidal field of view of 25 degrees by 0.1degree onto a single very small photodetector area. If this were built to detect these thermal IR wavelengths, the size of that detector could be smaller than the optical aperture by a factor of 64,000.  It is well suited to sensing hard to detect objects over a very wide field of view. 

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The small form factor Free Space Optics (FSO) receiver:

Light hitting this 'receiving optic' stays within the material of the lens until it hits the photodetector, allowing for a shallow depth of the device.  It acts as a strong filter for stray light and concentrates by orders of magnitude greater than widely used optical approaches, which can be used to enable improvements in signal-noise ratio, sensitivity, system cost, bandwidth or power consumption.  It is well suited to receiving sensing low light levels for narrow-wide field of views.

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applications:

Tethir's optical toolkit is best suited to use in electro-optical applications where the production of an image is not necessary.  Examples include:

-  Optical Wireless Communication

-  Sensing

-  Range Finders

-  Lidar

-  Wireless Quantum Key Distribution

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technology origins:

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The challenge to highly concentrate photons from a conical field of view close to the physical limit was only met 50 years ago by Welford and Winston through a completely different approach to geometrical optics than is needed to form images, which had dominated the development of optics for centuries.  They demonstrated that this optical approach could be used to concentrate terrestrial sunlight by a factor of 56,000, producing an irradiance that could exceed that of the surface of the sun.

During the last 25 years billions of dollars were spent on development and refinement of these optics, mainly in an attempt to bring down the price of solar electricity. Since Chinese PV modules have dramatically reduced this cost, most of this work lies neglected.

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Throughout these 25 years, collaboration has nevertheless continued with leading European research institutions such as Fraunhofer and Imperial to analyse, design and build optical systems based on these new principles with over £10m of grant and investor funding, not only for solar energy applications but also for optical wireless, sensing and other Free Space Optical applications.

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