<title>Third-generation Miniature Ruggedized Optical Correlator (MROC) module</title>

Abstract

Many applications, including military, medical, and security, have a requirement for small, low-power, low-cost pattern recognition systems that are capable of locating and identifying targets or anomalies. Optical correlators can perform twodimensional pattern recognition at greater rates than digital platforms of equivalent size, power and/or weight. The patented Miniature Ruggedized Optical Correlator (MROCTM) has been built to meet the environmental, size, power, and weight requirements of rugged military and commercial applications, and at a cost that will permit wide deployment of the capability. The third generation of the optical correlator (MROC III) includes a ferro-electric liquid crystal (FLC) spatial light modulator (SLM) device in both the input plane and the filter plane, and an improved block design that results in both high light efficiency and very fast operational speed. This new correlator design has a reduced volume of approximately 260 cubic centimeters. The MROC III module, which includes all drive electronics and interfaces developed for the MROC II, is a 6U VME module that now occupies only four VME card slots compared to the 5 slots required for MROC I and MROC II. In this paper we will provide a brief review of the MROC architecture and present sample results for the MROC III. Our initial tests demonstrated very high correlation levels, i.e. excellent discrimination (SNR-'50), at pattern matching rates of 1920 correlations per second (cps).

A novel compact parallel optical correlator

“…When the operational speed has reached the light-speed, the image processing speed is just restricted by photoelectric signal converters, such as spatial light modulators and CMOS probers. Image processing is expected to faster than 1000 frames per second ( Litton Electronics [9][10]、Jet Propulsion Laboratory ) while the existing embedded electronic chips can only achieve 20 to 30 frames per second. Hence, an optical processor takes great advantages in the rapidity of kinds of real-time video / graphics processing.…”

“…In the last two decades, several new JTC techniques have been reported which yield better performance. Long before, some American company and laboratory have been making researches on JTC techniques and theory, such as NASA, Litton [9][10] and Jet Propulsion Laboratory [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] [11][12][13][14][15]. But they mostly focused on the theory analysis and simulation.…”

Optical and electronic design of a hybrid digital-optical correlator system

“…The number of template filters that can be stored in thin holographic films is limited, so it is now common to use a temporal multiplexing filter technique employing spatial light modulators ͑SLMs͒. [2][3][4][5] However, to realize the full programmable flexibility required, an effective electronic control and data interface must be implemented between the optical processor and a digital computer. 6 Conventional modern 4-f 1 correlator systems typically consist of the following: An input camera, which is controlled by a computer, is used to record the input signal.…”

High Speed Holographic Optical Correlator for Face Recognition

“…At present, the system seems to be most promising for ultrahigh density volumetric optical storage. Moreover, we proposed the super high-speed FARCO (S-FARCO) ((a) (b) ) that integrates optical correlation technology used in FARCO and a co-axial holographic optical storage system (Horimai Tan & Li, 2006). Preliminary correlation experiments using the co-axial optical set-up show an excellent performance of high correlation peaks and low error rates.…”