A Highly Parallelized Signal and Image Recognition Method Based on Spatial Optics

This article presents a highly parallelized signal and image recognition method based on spatial optics by joint multiplexing of the spatial position and angular spectrum. By mapping different processor features into different spatial positions and overlaying different angular spectral components of different diffraction sources, this method can simultaneously process multiple sequences using multiple processors. Due to the decimeter-scale length of the optical path and the all-optical processing flow, this method has a nanosecond processing delay and a high-performance power consumption ratio. This method is strictly proven in theory, and a prototype is designed for experimental testing. With the modulation rate at 2 GHz, the experiment’s real-time recognition of over 50 TOPS [trillions (1012) of operations per second (OPS)] is achieved. This method provides a potential solution for applications with real-time requirements such as high-speed recognition of unknown signals, weak signal detection, and system warning supervision due to its extremely low processing delay and power consumption.