OPTICAL TARGET RECOGNITION SYSTEM

Prior art optical image correlators are extremely cumbersome and do not use spatial light modulators. To determine whether an of-interest target is within a scene, the present invention optical correlator uses a laser diode, a spatial light modulator, a holographic lens array, a matched filter array and an inverse transform lens. In particular, the laser diode generates a coherent laser beam, which is expanded and collimated. Information of the of-interest target is encoded thereon by the spatial light modulator. The encoded laser beam is then directed to the holographic lens array, which replicates from the single laser beam a plurality of similar beams. These beams are focused onto a matched filter array having multiple matched filters, the number of which corresponds to the number of incoming beams. If there is a close match between an incoming beam and a corresponding matched filter, a high intensity light is emitted from that particular matched filter toward the inverse transform lens, from when the high intensity beam is focused onto a correlation plane, where the existence of of-interest targets is ascertained.