Reference phase-encoded fringe-adjusted joint transform correlation

A novel reference phase-encoded joint transform correlation technique is proposed for efficient multiple-target detection. The proposed method employs phase encoding for the reference image and nonlinear Fourier plane apodization to optimize the detection performance. Existing joint transform correlators (JTC's) require multistep on-line processing to eliminate the false alarms. The proposed reference phase-encoded JTC overcomes false-target detection by eliminating the false correlation peaks while alleviating the effects of noise and other artifacts in just one step, thus ensuring higher processing speed. This technique yields only one peak per target instead of a pair of peaks produced by alternate JTC's. An all-optical implementation for the reference phase-encoded JTC technique is proposed, and computer simulation results are presented.