Acousto-optical wideband correlator system: design, implementation, and evaluation.

We describe the design and development of an acousto-optical wideband correlator that we integrated into a digital signal-processing system testbed. We report its measured performance and compare it with various theoretical performance measures, one of which compares the optical system with an equivalent efficient digital correlator. The measured performance of the optical system was 20 to 70 times that of a VAX 6410 computer using a fast-Fourier-transform correlation algorithm and a vector processor, even though the electronic interface system limited the performance of the optical system to less than 0.5% of its potential. We also compare the system with commercially available digital signal-processing boards.

[1]  H. Helms.  Fast Fourier transform method of computing difference equations and simulating filters , 1967, IEEE Transactions on Audio and Electroacoustics.

[2]  Bernard M. Smith.  Instantaneous companding of quantized signals , 1957 .

[3]  A. VanderLugt,et al.  Optical Signal Processing , 1990 .

[4]  William A. Struzinski,et al.  The effect of improper normalization on the performance of an automated energy detector , 1985 .

[5]  D. Hecht,et al.  Multifrequency Acoustooptic Diffraction , 1977, IEEE Transactions on Sonics and Ultrasonics.

[6]  P. V. Gatenby,et al.  Acousto-optic signal processing , 1984 .

[7]  Robert N. McDonough,et al.  Detection of signals in noise , 1971 .

[8]  Harold H. Szu,et al.  Causal analytical wavelet transform , 1992 .

[9]  S. P. Pitt,et al.  Sampling and Interpolation of Bandlimited Signals by Quadrature Methods , 1970 .

[10]  R. D. Griffin.  System Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of the Optical Broadband Correlator , 1994 .

[11]  David Casasent.  Transition of Optical Processors into Systems 1993 , 1993 .

[12]  G. Elston,et al.  Intermodulation Products in Acousto-Optic Signal Processing Systems , 1985, IEEE 1985 Ultrasonics Symposium.

[13]  D.V. Gupta,et al.  An Adaptive Threshold System for Nonstationary Noise Backgrounds , 1977, IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems.

[14]  M. Skolnik,et al.  Introduction to Radar Systems , 2021, Advances in Adaptive Radar Detection and Range Estimation.

[15]  E. Brigham,et al.  The fast Fourier transform , 2016, IEEE Spectrum.

[16]  E. J. Kelly,et al.  Matched-Filter Theory for High-Velocity, Accelerating Targets , 1965, IEEE Transactions on Military Electronics.