Electronic Technology and Reliability Department, University Politehnica of Bucharest, 060042 Bucharest, Romania.
Sensors (Basel). 2023 Jan 12;23(2):907. doi: 10.3390/s23020907.
Optical correlators are efficient optical systems that have gained a wide range of applications both in image recognition and encryption, due to their special properties that benefit from the optoelectronic setup instead of an all-electronic one. This paper presents, to the best of our knowledge, the most extensive review of optical correlators to date. The main types are overviewed, together with their most frequent applications in the newest contributions, ranging from security uses in cryptosystems, to medical and space applications, femtosecond pulse detection and various other image recognition proposals. The paper also includes a comparison between various optical correlators developed recently, highlighting their advantages and weaknesses, to gain a better perspective towards finding the best solutions in any specific domain where these devices might prove highly efficient and useful.
光学相关器是高效的光学系统，由于其特殊的性质，它们在图像识别和加密等领域得到了广泛的应用，因为它们受益于光电设置，而不是全电子设置。本文是迄今为止对光学相关器最广泛的综述。概述了主要类型，并结合它们在最新贡献中的最常见应用，从密码系统中的安全用途，到医疗和空间应用、飞秒脉冲检测以及各种其他图像识别方案。本文还比较了最近开发的各种光学相关器，突出了它们的优点和缺点，以便在这些设备可能非常有效和有用的任何特定领域找到最佳解决方案时，能够获得更好的视角。
