Sensors for short-wave

New sensors for the established Avantest Q8230 optical power meter allow measurement of wavelengths down to 400nm and are suitable for precise measurements on CD, DVD, Blu-ray, and HD-DVD playersRohde and Schwarz is bringing out additional power sensors for the established Q8230 optical power meter from Advantest. Users can now combine the level meter with new surface-mounted sensors for an optical radiation from 390 to 1100nm. The handheld optical power meter is suitable for precise power measurements on CD, DVD, Blu-ray, and HD-DVD players.

Customers expect DVD players that are not only able to play music, films, and other data, but that can also record such data.

This is a challenge for the optical memory market: to increase data capacity, information has to be written on DVDs and CDs more and more densely.

Therefore, the optical recording units use shorter wavelengths down to 400nm.
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To meet this requirement, the Q8230 optical power meter measures optical radiation in the visible and near-infra-red range of 390 to 900 or 1100nm, respectively.

Depending on the radiated power, users only need the appropriate power sensors.

The Q82314 sensor series permits measurements on optical recording units and disk drives with memory values up to 27 Gbyte.

A power sensor covers the 405, 650 and 780nm operating wavelengths.

The sensor's measurement uncertainty is less than 2.5 % for these wavelengths with very little dependence on the radiation's angle of incidence, reflectance, and polarisation.

To allow reliable measurement of the radiated power of lenses with a high numeric aperture (NA), the W model has a detector surface (18 nm x 18 mm) that is larger than usual (10 nm x 10 mm).

Three cylindrical power sensors of the Q8232x model series with identical data are available for use on an optical bank or on 850nm systems with optical fibre access.

A small handheld, the Q8230 weighs only 0.3kg.

The Q8230 has a 5 1/2-digit level display (resolution of 0.001dB) and performs wavelength correction in 1nm steps.