Exail – Expanding your capabilities

Exail is a high-tech industrial group specializing in cutting-edge robotics, maritime, navigation, aerospace and photonics technologies. With a strong entrepreneurial culture, Exail delivers performance, reliability and safety to its civil and defense clients operating in severe environments. From the deep sea to outer space, Exail expands their capabilities with a range of robust in-house manufactured components, products and systems.

Employing a workforce of 2000+ people worldwide, the company benefits from a global footprint and conducts its business in over 80 countries. Exail was formed by ECA Group and iXblue joining forces in 2022.

In the photonics field, Exail wishes to empower engineers all around the world with high-performance, innovative and reliable optical solutions that have proven their relevance for laser, quantum, sensing, or space applications.

On the road to global expertise in “time-frequency” metrology

For over a decade, Exail has been the industrial partner of REFIMEVE, the French national Metrological Fiber Network with European Vocation. Initiated in 2012 by LPL and LTE laboratories (CNRS / SENSEI partners), the REFIMEVE project set out to transfer ultra-precise time and frequency references on the Internet over long-distances in parallel to regular data traffic.

Selected to industrialize a laboratory prototype, Exail developed a turnkey, industry-grade solution for transferring optical frequency reference over long-distances. The REFIMEVE network now spans from Paris to more than 30 sites across France and neighboring countries. One of the latest links was deployed at CERN, enabling the transmission of an optical clock signal with greater accuracy than what can be achieved using GNSS.

Exail’s Regeneration Laser Station (RLS), turn-key industry-grade solution for optical frequency transfer over optical fibers.

Turning telecom networks into large-scale distributed environmental sensors through advanced fiber stabilization

Within REFIMEVE, seismic events are now routinely detected along the French fiber network. Recent internal catalogues have recorded over 200 earthquakes of magnitude Mw > 5 in just two years, demonstrating the potential of national infrastructure for seismic sensing. Learn more: https://senseiproject.eu/meet-the-partner-cnrs-french-national-centre-for-scientific-research-3-15/

Upgrading time-frequency metrology solutions with acoustic sensing capabilities

Exail sees SENSEI as a great opportunity to advance frequency transfer over fiber technologies that were developed as part of the REFIMEVE project, such as the Regeneration Laser Station (RLS) and the Multi-branch Laser Station (MLS). These are industry-grade solutions derived from laboratory prototypes, designed to distribute a frequency-stabilized signal through fiber telecom network between dozens of metrology labs in France and Europe. The development of new functionalities will enable these fiber telecom networks to be upgraded with acoustic sensing capabilities that, with modest investment, could enable large-scale seismic mapping with excellent resolution.

…more to come: stay tuned!