SBIR-STTR Award

A new computational engine based on the emerging technology of acoustic charge transport (act) has been developed to process analog signals or digital data at speeds more than three orders of magnitude beyond current digital signal processor chips. The act programmable signal processor is a massively parallel analog device on a single gallium-arsenide chip which may be used to perform correlations with multiply-and-accumulative times of less than 30 picoseconds. The act processor may be used as a pattern matcher to perform high-speed correlation against a library of reference functions; this process is useful in applications ranging from voice recognition and image processing to identification of wideband signals in military electronic warfare systems. The proposed program seeks to demonstrate the technical feasibility of using the act device as a pattern matcher by evaluating the characteristics of potential reference signals, using existing act processors to measure the ability to recognize such signals, and projecting the performance of an operational act-based pattern matching system. Anticipated benefits/potential commercial applications - in addition to application in military signal-recognition systems, act pattern matchers may be used in voice-recognition systems, machine vision, and "smart" triggers for test instrumentation.