Discrimination of optical sources by use of adaptive blind source separation theory

Optical systems based on rotating reticles were invented to determine the p olar coordinates of a primarily IR optical source. Such systems fail when s everal optical sources are present in their field of view simultaneously. I t is demonstrated experimentally that this drawback can be overcome by the application of a blind-signal-separation algorithm on the output signals of a modified optical system. The separation of the modified optical system r esponses into independent components yields modulating functions that carry information concerning the polar coordinates of the corresponding single o ptical sources. (C) 1999 Optical Society of America.