Patent ID: 8300113

Claim:
A method for capturing an image of a target through a single common sensor and producing at least one image mode of a plurality of potential image modes of said target comprising: capturing an incoming optical signal at an optical aperture; detecting said incoming optical signal captured at said optical aperture with a square-law sensor acting as said common sensor to convert said incoming optical signal to an electrical signal; passing said electrical signal through a low-noise amplifier to produce a Low-Noise Amplified (LNA) signal; passing said LNA signal through at least one correlator, said at least one correlator having a time scalable Walsh-Hadamard binary basis function; calculating a correlation output coefficient for said at least one correlator in order to temporally correlate said LNA signal, said correlation output coefficient of said at least one correlator being calculated in accordance with Walsh-Hadamard mathematical principles as a function of said Walsh-Hadamard binary basis function of said at least one correlator; digitizing said correlation output coefficient of said at least one correlator into a digital correlation output coefficient for said at least one correlator by passing said correlation output coefficient signal through an analog-to-digital converter for said at least one correlator; and, performing image mode processing on said digital correlation output coefficient of said at least one correlator in a digital processing domain to produce said at least one image mode of said plurality of potential image modes.