TNTrROIDTJCrION.Availa-ble surface acous1;tic wa,.ve devices for rea-7l time-domain nrocessing are linear matchedl filters which may he regarded as fixed in that a given devi-ce processes only one specific waven,form or code. EXamIles are.ulse conoressi-on filters ,nd analocrme matched filters (tapoped delaty li T 1ne;ith su;itable interconnections of taps to process biphase codiedl wavveforms). Certain envisagedi applications in sec-ure commnncnication anr-' radar systems require a specific device to -rocess a numher of orthoconAally codredl signal1 s w>hose cro DSs-or-relation functions at a pa)rticub.r time-slot are zero. Tn nrincinle, the requL4-e nent ccan be met by an electronically. progrcamm,"able analonue matcherl filter in wVhi ch the codie is v-riahle throuch electronic adjustment of the surfacre acoustic wave tap-Js by microelectronic circuits. Disadvantages cf thisa-,roch are that the construction of such devices involves complex hybrid techBoth the linear matched filter and the Correlator are ontimum in recovering signals frorm noise. Correlation 14(t), a.nd the related operation of convolution, of tw-time functions., F(t) annd (r (t), are defined! respectively R-As H(t) =J F(r) G(r-t) dr nd jF(t )G(t--) dr1(1) Twvo collinear contra-directed acoust1i'c wvtains each oncta-r ier frequency, , may be i nt:erated narame Ptrically in a ferroelectric ma-terial t.hrough the constitutive relationship p = I C SI S2 2) w!here p denotes the instanta.neous elect-ric polarisation and sl mayl, be identifiedfl with the strain fields of F a8nd (. The necesscary -orocesses define-in equation (1 r< time tr-nslcation, multipnlicatlion and intee-ration of F and (3 are ca5ll nerfor:med lealino to a spatially inriant electric polarisat-ion at 2 w which mnay he couTnl out by a resonatelcap>acitor. E xnDerinental results for convolut n nsinn lit hiiLr niobate have been reporterd by Thompson & Qouatek1) and L,arson(3)for bullkc wavels at microwave fre-uencies, andc by L,uukkalka &2z1 K'ino (3) for surface waves at VHF (Fig.l).Thi. s np?er reports correlation between a 31-bit pseudo-ranndom sequence and the time-re%vhersed replica of that sequence through the same parametric ifiteration. The device h.s a hich degree of programmabi}ity in that no wavveform coding is iosed structurally.
THEORY:Two distnc theoretical aspects must be considered namely the time description of H(t) for various coded wavYveforms and the magnitude of the electromagnetic output power, P2