Reference phase-encoded fringe-adjusted joint transform correlation

A novel reference phase-encoded-joint transform correlation technique is pr oposed for efficient multiple-target detection. The proposed method employs phase encoding for the reference image and nonlinear Fourier plane apodiza tion to optimize the detection performance. Existing joint transform correl ators (JTC's) require multistep on-line processing to eliminate the false a larms. The proposed reference phase-encoded JTC overcomes false-target dete ction by eliminating the false correlation peaks while alleviating the effe cts of noise and other artifacts in just one step, thus ensuring higher pro cessing speed. This technique yields only one peak per target instead of a pair of peaks produced by alternate JTC's. An all-optical implementation fo r the reference phase-encoded JTC technique is proposed, and computer simul ation results are presented. (C) 2001 Optical Society of America.