Date of Award

3-2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering

Department

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Guna Seetharaman, PhD

Abstract

The current research is focused on the design and fabrication of an electrically programmable diffraction grating using standard micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) technology. The goal is to design a beam steering element required to build very small hyperspectral imaging (HSI) sensors. The diffraction grating will be used to perform beam-dispersion - a critical step in the imaging process. The proposed transmissive diffraction grating based approach will minimize the overall size and the number of components in the physical design of the hyperspectral imagers, thereby enabling us to exploit the traditional advantages of MEMS such as increased reliability, smaller size, reduced power requirement. In addition, it would facilitate integrated signal processing through hybrid MEMS/CMOS and increased versatility of deployment. The work described here was done in three stages: 1) developing device specifications; 2) identifying viable designs and potential design challenges associated with polyMUMPs fabricated devices; and 3) design, fabrication and testing of the diffraction gratings.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GE-ENG-08-07

Comments

Approved for Public Release, Distribution Unlimited.

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