Switching-, logic-, memory-, and symbolic substitution-oriented optical signal processing

In this thesis, switching-, logic-, memory-, and symbolic substitution- oriented optical signal processing is studied. In order to maximize the major advantages of optical signal processing, various, such as binary, residue, and modified signed-digit number systems, are studied. Utilizing these number systems together with various optically passive and active elements, nine different optical signal processors are implemented.;A new method to realize a medium-scale, free-space optical programmable logic array is proposed. This device, together with a multiple-variable OR matrix, can be used to implement Boolean combinatorial logic operations. For an optical binary combinatorial logic computation, the proposed method efficiently uses three-dimensional space and optical elements. Experimental results obtained using an inexpensive liquid-crystal television are included.;A new optical morphological image processor is presented and experimentally implemented. The morphological Closing operation is performed via a combination of two optical Dilation and an Inversion operations, instead of a Dilation followed by an Erosion operation. The Dilation is optically performed by a lenslet array, while the inversion is performed by an optically addressable spatial light modulator.;Using two inexpensive LCTVs and an image subtraction technique, a new optical pyramidal tracking novelty filter is suggested and the experimental demonstrations are presented. This optical processor, unlike electronic processors which require both a mesh-type cellular array and a pixel by pixel image subtraction leading to a time-consuming processing, performs real-time parallel image tracking.;A new scheme for digital optical computing utilizing a non-holographic content addressable memory is discussed. Designs of optical modified signed-digit arithmetic processor are presented. This non-holographic content addressable memory-based MSD processor offers a number of practical advantages, such as fast processing speed and ease of implementation. Also, using logic reductions, stored information is minimized.;Optical register transfer microoperations based on an associative memory are proposed. A hybrid optical word-parallel, bit serial register transfer processor architecture based on an optical holographic associative symbolic substitution is described and experimental results are presented.;Several new higher-order spatial symbol recognition methods for symbolic substitution-based calculations are presented. Three different higher-order optical symbolic recognition architectures are suggested. An optical cavity-based scheme is experimentally implemented. By superimposing replicas of input image generated by a lenslet array, a content addressable memory-based optical symbolic recognition processor is presented. Finally, a lenslet-based optical symbolic recognition processor is also proposed. Either a dual-rail or a triple-rail optical spatial intensity encoding is employed. Some experimental results are also presented.