An acousto-optic (AO) correlator is being constructed that offers a small, lightweight solution to detecting and analyzing widebandwidth, spread-spectrum signals. The processor is being inserted into an existing electronic support measure (ESM) test-bed under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Transition of Optical Processors into Systems (TOPS) program. The correlator has a processing bandwidth of 500 MHz and will be used to detect direct-sequence, phase-modulated signals, frequency-hopped signals, chirps, and impulses. A description of the processor is provided along with experimental results obtained from an interim developmental breadboard. Subsequent digital processing, which includes nonlinear detection and Fourier transformation, is used to determine center frequencies, bandwidths, and band shape. Theoretical descriptions of the post-processing are provided and simulation results are discussed.
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