Patent ID: 8922688

Claim:
A method for operating a device including an array of light modulating elements and a light sensing device, wherein the array of light modulating elements is configured to modulate an incident light stream, wherein each of the light modulating elements is configured to modulate a corresponding portion of the incident light stream, the method comprising: executing a search algorithm to identify a subset of the array of light modulating elements where intensity of the incident light stream is above an intensity threshold, wherein said executing the search algorithm includes: generating a first sequence of spatial patterns; modulating the incident stream of light with the first sequence of spatial patterns to produce a first modulated light stream, wherein said modulating is performed by the array of light modulating elements; receiving first samples of an electrical signal produced by the light sensing device, wherein the first samples represent intensity of the first modulated light stream as a function of time; operating on the first samples to identify said subset; wherein the first sequence of spatial patterns includes search patterns representing a partition of the array of light modulating elements into a collection of non-overlapping regions, wherein each of the search patterns corresponds to a respective one of the regions, wherein said operating on the first samples includes: extracting search samples corresponding to the search patterns from the first samples; and determining the n L largest of the search samples.