Abstract

Transient signals accompanied by a high noise level pose both basic and practical detection challenges. Disciplines that range from communication and astronomy to molecular physics face a very similar detection problem. When phenomena of interest are repetitive, different averaging techniques can be applied in order to elevate the signal above the detection threshold. In contrast, nonrepetitive signals, commonly occurring in communication and astronomy, cannot be processed using averaging techniques. With the advent of near-noiseless replication techniques, single-instance signal separation from noise has become possible. Here, we demonstrate that a single-instance signal can be mapped to 300 optical carrier frequencies and detected with low-bandwidth receivers to generate detection gains of 24 dB with respect to a single integrating receiver with the same bandwidth. The spectral-replicating receiver was used to detect a single-instance signal with power that was four times lower than the accompanying noise level.

© 2016 IEEE

Minimum-error-probability receiver for detecting a noisy target in colored background noise

Amir H. Fazlollahi, Bahram Javidi, and Peter Willett
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 14(4) 845-852 (1997)

Design of filters to detect a noisy target in nonoverlapping background noise

Bahram Javidi and Jun Wang
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 11(10) 2604-2612 (1994)

Fast volume-scanning light sheet microscopy reveals transient neuronal events

Peter Haslehurst, Zhengyi Yang, Kishan Dholakia, and Nigel Emptage
Biomed. Opt. Express 9(5) 2154-2167 (2018)

Minimum-mean-square-error filters for detecting a noisy target in background noise

Bahram Javidi, Farokh Parchekani, and Guanshen Zhang
Appl. Opt. 35(35) 6964-6975 (1996)

Quantum illumination using polarization-path entangled single photons for low reflectivity object detection in a noisy background

K. Muhammed Shafi, A. Padhye, and C. M. Chandrashekar
Opt. Express 31(20) 32093-32104 (2023)