HYBRID OPTICAL IMPLEMENTATION OF DISCRETE WAVELET TRANSFORMS - A TUTORIAL

Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in the use of wavele ts to supplement or replace traditional Fourier transform signal proce ssing. Because wavelet operations can be expressed as either a convolu tion/correlation operation or a linear filter bank, they are well suit ed to optical implementations. This paper provides a tutorial on wavel ets and the hybrid optical implementation of discrete wavelet transfor ms. Various approaches for implementing the wavelet transform are revi ewed, including traditional Vander Lugt correlators, different types o f spatial light modulators, joint time-frequency representations, holo graphic and interferometric implementations, and acousto-optic correla tors, Finally, the concept for a new architecture is proposed using ac ousto-optic finite impulse response (FIR) filters to implement wavelet s with perfect reconstruction properties.