Catalog Course Description

Class Information

My university email address is: .

Please put the following => [6930] (exactly as shown, with square brackets) into your subject line, as well as an indication of what you are sending me. This will help me to better manage the large number of emails that I will be receiving this semester, from the three classes I am teaching. Also, because of SPAM and security issues, be advised that I always delete emails with no content in the subject line, so at least get the [6930] into the subject line. Additionally, it is an extremely good idea to include your NAME in your emails. I realize that some of you have secret identities to keep the evil supervillains from finding out who you are, but I promise not to tell them, and I really would like to know to whom I am responding when I get an email. Your university-provided email address does not always tell me who you are, and you don't want me to have to remember the email address of everyone in the class, because it will make me cranky. And cranky professors do not give out liberal amounts of partial credit.

My web page: http://www.engineering.usu.edu/ece/faculty/rjost

Lecture Location:
1:30 - 2:45 TR, EL 109
(Note that this is a change from what was published in the Fall 2005 Catalog.)

Prerequisites:
Familiarity and understanding of the optical concepts taught in the Optics I course.

Required Text:

"Handbook of Optics on CD-ROM," Michael Bass, editor in chief, McGraw-Hill, 1996. ISBN 007-426223-8. The Handbook of Optics CD-ROM is a fully searchable version of Volumes 1 and 2 of the The Handbook of Optics, Second Edition, by the Optical Society of America. Written by 84 leading authorities in the field, and a whopping 3,500 pages of useful material.

"Handbook of Optics, Volume III," Michael Bass, editor in chief, McGraw-Hill, 1996. ISBN 007-426223-8. A third volume of the Handbook of Optics, focusing on classical optics, vision optics, and x-ray & neutron optics. Note that I have both of these listed here with the same ISBN number. I have worked with McGraw-Hill to put this package together and they have basically made both volumes available for roughly the cost of a single volume. An EXTREMELY good deal, cost-wise, for what you are getting here. You will not be able to beat this deal with Amazon, or any other place, (unless the Bookstore jacks up the price unreasonably, and I intend to keep an eye on what they charge, since I know what McGraw-Hill is charging them). Not only will you use both of these references in this class, but they will be useful for much of your career, if you go on in any kind of optics related area.

Recommended Supplements:

	"Infrared Detectors and Systems," by E.L. Dereniak and G.D. Boreman, Wiley-Interscience, 1996. ISBN 0-471-12209-2. As you can tell by going through the table of contents of this text, there is a great amount of information on the components and design of infrared imaging systems in this text. Almost all of the material in this book is relevant to our course, and will be touched on in some fashion, though not to this level of detail.
	"Radiometry and the Detection of Optical Radiation," Robert W. Boyd, Wiley & Sons, 1983. ISBN 0-471-86188-X. This text contains detailed information on the radiometric principles that we will need in order to analyze and design a remote sensing system. Somewhat dated, but still contains much useful information about the basics of optical detection. This text is more oriented toward general radiometry and detection, while the Dereniak and Boreman text is oriented toward IR detectors and systems. There are some other radiometry and detection texts listed in the "Course and other texts document" on the reference materials page.
	"Optical Sources, Detectors and Systems: Fundamentals and Applications" Robert H. Kingston, Academic Press, 1995. ISBN 0-12-408655-1. This text focuses on sources and detectors in optical systems, spending most of the time on performance parameters, like noise. A good supplement, but doesn't cover the breadth of topics that you need to be exposed to in a fundamental course in Radiometry and Detection.

Recommended Software: We will be using MATLAB to develop some Radiometry and Detection modeling tools. One of the smartest things you could do, if you plan on doing extensive work in mathematical modeling and simulation applications or Digital Signal/Image Processing is to get your own copy of the Student edition of MATLAB. Release 14, service pack 1 is the latest version. With this on your computer, you can free yourself from the computer lab.

Another suitable tool for Radiometry and Detection modeling tools is Mathcad by the company Mathsoft. This program is more interactive than MATLAB, and is thus very well suited to developing what-if design packages.

I use and recommend both packages. The Mathcad worksheets give you a better "view" of what is going on in the development of modeling scenarios, especially while you are in the cut and try design stage of putting an analysis package together. Plus, you can see the intermediate results in a more straightforward fashion. On the other hand, when I know what I want to do and how I want a package to operate, I like the GUI interface possible with MATLAB. I consider these two packages to be complementary and it is worth your time to learn how to use both. Because this class draws from both ECE and Physics, I will accept homework and programming work in either form.

Syllabus: We will be covering the following topic areas: Introduction to Radiometry; Propagation, Generation, and Detection of Optical Radiation; Radiometric Instrumentation; Radiometric Measurements and Calibration. For more detailed information, take a look at this draft syllabus of what we will cover. This is based closely on the outline for the radiometry text that Dr. Jim Palmer, at the University of Arizona, is working on, with a few modifications, based upon my own research interests.

Grading:

Reading and HW Assignments

Reference Material: Useful Information

Radiometry and Detection Links: Useful Links related to Radiometry and Detection information

Supplemental Material, for lecture handouts

Return to My USU Home Page

Last updated: 10/16/2005