Ultra-fast Real-time Target Recognition Using a Shift, Scale, and Rotation Invariant Hybrid Opto-electronic Joint Transform Correlator

Hybrid Opto-electronic correlators (HOC) overcome many limitations of all-optical correlators (AOC) while maintaining high-speed operation. However, neither the OEC nor the AOC in their conventional configurations can detect targets that have been rotated or scaled relative to a reference. This can be addressed by using a polar Mellin transform (PMT) pre-processing step to convert input images into signatures that contain most of the relevant information, albeit represented in a shift, scale, and rotation invariant (SSRI) manner. The PMT requires the use of optics to perform the Fourier transform and electronics for a log-polar remapping step. Recently, we demonstrated a pipelined architecture that can perform the PMT at a speed of 720 frames per second (fps), enabling the construction of an efficient opto-electronic PMT pre-processor. Here, we present an experimental demonstration of a complete HOC that implements this technique to achieve real-time and ultra-fast SSRI target recognition for space situational awareness. For this demonstration, we make use of a modified version of the HOC that makes use of Joint Transform Correlation , thus rendering the system simpler and more compact.