A REAL-TIME SMART OPTICAL SAR SIGNAL PROCESSOR

Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes an innovative optical SAR signal processor for automated target-recognition applications. The processor is based on a two-step optical technique: A coarse-search step and a fine-search step. The coarse-search optical processor can compare the input pattern with the key features of an entire template data bank in one pass of light transmission and provide most likely addresses to the data bank for accessing possible matching patterns. These possible matching patterns will then be fed into the fine-search optical processor for a thorough comparison. The advantage of this two-step processing is its intellegence--the system does not have to exhaustively search the entire data bank. POC further proposes a unique technological development in each step of the SAR N6 interconnectability, represents a technology beyond the state of the art in coarse-search processing. A distributed-array processing technique will be explored in the fine-search processor for increased throughput and dynamic range.