Adaptive Phased Array Radar Processing On A Multi-Channel, Acousto-Optic, Linear Algebra System: Experimental Results

The use of a high accuracy optical processor to obtain the optimal solution for the weight vector in the Adaptive Phased Array Radar (APAR) problem is discussed. This optical system is a multi-channel, acousto-optic architecture which obtains high accuracy results through the encoding of the numerical data as bit streams which are processed optically. The actual accuracy is based upon the number of bits used for processing and is controlled through software. Experimental results obtained using the laboratory optical processing system are presented for several APAR signal environments. These experiments demonstrate that the optical processing system is capable of yielding weight vectors nearly identical to the optimal solution.