A Compact Reliable Real-Time Optical Correlator with Extremely High Computation Parallism

Physical Optics Corporation proposes the development of a new, highly parallel optical correlator (HPOC) capable of achieving time correlations between input sonar signals and up to 10 thousand simultaneous reference signals. The HPOC design does not rely on exotic coherent optical processing techniques or buldk lens imaging systems. It uses only state-of-the-art fiber-optic components. The HPOC concept uses a spinning drum on which up to 1024 distinct gray level encoded reference signals are placed. A light beam emitted by an LED and modulated by the incoming sonar signal is incident upon the drum and picked up by a fiber faceplate which conducts the light signals to a 1024 x 1024 CCD array. To eliminate the correlation DC background and increase the system's dynamic range, the HPOC will incorporate positive and negative CCD detection channels. With the HPOC, ten million parallel correlations can be performed. The unique, extremely high parallelism of computation, which even today's most powerful digital computers do not have, would allow simultaneous correlations with a large number of reference signatures. The HPOC is expected to solve the difficult data analysis problem of detecting and identifying underwater moving targets in the presence of extraneous noise.