Abstract

The processing of SAR data is one of the great success stories of optical data processing. It is a problem which readily lends itself to the parallelism of optics. Optical solutions have, however, lacked two desireable characteristics: small size and real-time operation. Recently, novel optical architectures which overcome these drawbacks have been developed by Psaltis and Tanguay. (Some of which are reviewed in (1).) In this paper, we describe a new compact lensless real-time optical processor of SAR data which is unique in that it utilizes incoherent light and readily available components and materials.

© 1987 Optical Society of America