Visual Display of Incoherent Wave Fields by Planar Arrays*

The passive planar arrays used to receive sonic waves through the earth or water or those employed in radio astronomy use mechanical or electronic scanning in order to observe a large solid angle, such as 2π sr. The purpose of the present paper is to develop a method for real-time visual display of such wave fields. It is analogous to the use of a wide-angle lens for viewing large solid angles in the visible spectrum. The method is analogous to a recently developed technique of incoherent holography, with the important difference that the sampling performed by an array makes unnecessary any film-processing stage.