LAMRECOR project, funded by MiUR with Poste Italiane as prime contractor, aims at demonstrating an innovative integrated system for advanced logistics targeted at minimizing the environmental impact of the fleet of vehicles, optimizing the productive processes, improving the safety of the postal workers, and developing new logistics procedures for mail delivery. For enhancing the safety of the workers, an integrated sensors system has been designed. The system includes an on-board unit to control the appropriate use of personal protective equipment, improving protection of the postmen also through the activation of an emergency call in case of accident, and to monitor functional performances of the vehicles. A prototype of the sensors system has been developed confirming the design results. Some mathematical models for studying the driving behaviour have been also analysed. A Decision Support System for the management of the logistics infrastructure has been developed and tested and data mining algorithms have been studied

An InP ring resonator with an experimentally demonstrated quality factor (Q) of the order of 106 is reported for the first time. This Q value, typical for low loss technologies such as silica-on-silicon, is a record for the InP technology and improves the state-of-the-art of about one order of magnitude. The cavity has been designed aiming at the Q-factor maximization while keeping the resonance depth of about 8 dB. The device was fabricated using metal-organic vapour-phase-epitaxy, photolithography and reactive ion etching. It has been optically characterized and all its performance parameters have been estimated. InP waveguide loss low as 0.45 dB/cm has been measured, leading to a potential shot noise limited resolution of 10 °/h for a new angular velocity sensor.

This paper reports the numerical and experimental results of a high-Q silica-onsilicon spiral resonator to be used in microoptical gyroscopes having a potential resolution <; 10 °/h. First, demonstration of a Ge:SiO2 waveguiding spiral cavity as sensing element for gyro applications is given, and results of its optical characterization are provided. Quality factor, finesse, free spectral range, and thermal stability have been measured, clearly showing the potential of the device for gyro applications. The effect of coupling tuning through micrometer scale heaters and the supported eigenstates of polarization have also been experimentally investigated. The thermal stabilization of the silica chip is realized using a thermoelectric cooler co-packaged with the resonant cavity. The Q-factor of the spiral exceeds 106, and the thermal drift of the resonance frequency is very low (<; 20 kHz/s). An original formula estimating the bias drift due to the Kerr effect has been derived, proving that a bias drift of 0.2 °/h can be achieved by controlling the polarization noise. The resolution of the angular velocity sensor has been numerically estimated by exploiting the experimental results. We demonstrate that the resolution of our device can be improved to values less than 10 °/h, by decreasing both the propagation loss within the resonator (<; 0.05 dB/cm, which is currently achievable) and the cavity insertion loss to 1-2 dB (typical value).

An optical rotation sensor is provided, comprising an optical ring resonator (RR) formed by a one-dimensional photonic crystal (1D PhC) waveguide, and a bus waveguide. A light input section of the bus waveguide is connectable to a light source, and a light output section of the bus waveguide is connectable to a light detector. The bus waveguide is optically coupled to the ring resonator within a coupling area which is located between the light input section and the light output section of the bus waveguide. The optical rotation sensor is configured to measure a shift of frequency of a resonance area (or a plurality of resonance areas) close to a band edge of a photonic band gap of the ring resonator, wherein the shift of frequency is caused by a rotation of the optical rotation sensor.