Abstract

Incoherent optical correlators are robust in the presence of optical system noise and are relatively insensitive to misalignment of optical components. To date, most studies involving incoherent correlators have utilized fixed holographic filters at the pupil plane. We point out that commercially available phase-only and binary phase-only spatial light modulators (SLM's) can be employed in the filter plane of an incoherent correlator. Computer simulations are used to demonstrate the feasibility of incoherent correlation with phase-only filtering. In many cases, the straight binarization techniques used in coherent binary phase-only filtering produce well defined correlation peaks. More sophisticated filter design techniques can be employed to exploit the fact that the object plane phase is a free variable. Randomizing the phase of the reference object prior to calculating the binary phase-only filter results in enhanced correlator performance.

© 1992 Optical Society of America