Abstract

White-light optical processors are known to perform better under noisy conditions as compared with their monochromatic counterparts. Here we give an analysis of their performance under temporally incoherent illumination and obtain quantitative results to support the claim. The output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for the proposed white-light optical processor is evaluated as a measure of performance. We study the behavior of the system when the noise is presented at the input or at the Fourier plane. We show that, except for the case when the amplitude noise is present at the input plane, the resulting output SNR improves considerably with the increasing bandwidth of the light source employed.

© 1984 Optical Society of America

Measurement of noise performance for a white-light optical signal processor

Francis T. S. Yu, Le-Nian Zheng, and Fu-Kuo Hsu
Appl. Opt. 24(2) 173-178 (1985)

Coherence measurement of a grating-based white-light optical signal processor

F. T. S. Yu, F. K. Hsu, and T. H. Chao
Appl. Opt. 23(2) 333-340 (1984)

Interferometric electro-optical signal processors with partially coherent illumination

Joseph Rosen, Mordechai Segev, Joseph Shamir, and Amnon Yariv
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 9(9) 1498-1507 (1992)

Cosinusoidal transforms in white light

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Appl. Opt. 23(6) 787-797 (1984)

Performance of a noisy phase-only matched filter in a broad spectral band optical correlator

Bahram Javidi and Francis T. S. Yu
Appl. Opt. 25(8) 1354-1358 (1986)