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The employability of photonics technology in the modern era’s highly demanding and sophisticated domain of aerospace and submarines has been an appealing challenge for the scientific communities. In this paper, we review our main results achieved so far on the use of optical fiber sensors for safety and security in innovative aerospace and submarine applications. In particular, recent results of in-field applications of optical fiber sensors in aircraft monitoring, from a weight and balance analysis to vehicle Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Landing Gear (LG) monitoring, are presented and discussed. Moreover, underwater fiber-optic hydrophones are presented from the design to marine application.

Heating is a strong enemy of SARS-CoV and related virus. Starting from both this consideration and from the basic principle of the microwave ovens which are based on the strong absorption, from organic tissues, of the radiation centered around 2.15 GHz, we examine the feasibility of using this frequency range to both lower the strength of the SARS-CoV (and related virus) inside the human body and to easily sterilize objects or closed rooms. We underline that this is only a preliminary theoretical feasibility analysis, which, of course, should be experimentally proven.

Our group, involving researchers from different universities in Campania, Italy, has been working for the last twenty years in the field of photonic sensors for safety and security in healthcare, industrial and environment applications. This is the first in a series of three companion papers. In this paper, we introduce the main concepts of the technologies employed for the realization of our photonic sensors. Then, we review our main results concerning the innovative applications for infrastructural and transportation monitoring.