title: Information-based optical design for binary-valued imagery.
abstract: Applications such as optical data storage, optical computing, and optical interconnects require optical systems that manipulate binary-valued images. Such an optical system can be viewed as a two-dimensional array of binary communication channels. This perspective is used to motivate the use of pagewise mutual information as a metric for optical system analysis and design. Fresnel propagation and coherent imaging both are analyzed in terms of mutual-information transmission. An information-based space-bandwidth product is used to analyze the trade-off between the numerical aperture and the number of image pixels in a coherent 4f system. We propose a new merit function to facilitate information-based optical system design. Information maximization and bit-error-rate minimization both are possible with the new radially weighted encircled-energy merit function. We demonstrate the use of this new merit function through a design example and show that the information throughput is increased by 8% and the bit-error rate is reduced by 36% when compared with systems designed with traditional criteria.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA. chou@ece.arizona.edu
authors.forename: W C
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Chou
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Neifeld
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Xuan