Joint transform correlator for optical temporal signals

Correlation is considered to be a fundamental operation in the field of signal processing. The fact that this operation can be implemented optically in a relatively simple manner is an important advantage of utilizing optical systems for signal processing. The VanderLugt 4-f system and the joint transform correlator (JTC) are the two most popular configurations for performing a spatial correlation operation optically. So far the JTC architecture has been used for performing correlation between two images, which are illuminated by a quasi-monochromatic light source. We propose a generalization of the JTC that performs a correlation between two temporal optical signals.