Spatial information transmission using orthogonal mutual coherence coding.

We use the coherence of a light beam to encode spatial information. We apply this principle to obtain spatial superresolution in a limited aperture system. The method is based on shaping the mutual intensity function of the illumination beam in a set of orthogonal distributions, each one carrying the information for a different frequency bandpass or spatial region of the input object. The coherence coding is analogous to time multiplexing but with multiplexing time slots that are given by the coherence time of the illumination beam. Most images are static during times much longer than this coherence time, and thus the increase of resolution in our system is obtained without any noticeable cost.