Continuous High-Rate Photonically Enabled Compressed Sensing (CHiRP-CS)

Due to the ultrahigh bandwidth capacity of photonics, high-speed optical imaging, and sensing technologies can capture and manipulate extremely fast and complex signals. However, the ultimate performance of these sensing systems is entirely constrained by the information throughput of digitization and processing electronics. This digitization bottleneck can be alleviated using the principles of compressed sensing to implement data compression in the optical domain prior to digitization. Continuous High-Rate Photonically Enabled Compressed Sensing (CHiRP-CS) is a flexible photonic architecture to implement such high-speed compressed sensing in continuously recording scenarios. To do so CHiRP-CS leverages high-speed optical signal processing in robust fiber optic hardware based on the principles of the space-time duality of electromagnetic waves. This chapter first provides a brief introduction to the background for CHiRP-CS including a description of compressed sensing and the space-time duality of electromagnetic waves. Subsequently, the working principles of CHiRP-CS are described and several example applications are highlighted.