Optical unmasking of spectrally overlapping RF signals

When two signals having overlapping frequency content are received at the same time, they interfere to obstruct detection of the information carried by each individual signal. We introduce here a new nonlinear optoelectronic filtering technique that enables the ability to individually detect two concurrent and spectrally overlapping signals, even when the amplitude ratio between the signals is as high as 100,000. We demonstrate our system for application in steganography where we unveil the information carried by a hidden desired RF signal, while a dominant interferer signal is intentionally transmitted nearby and at the same frequency. Our signal recovery technique, which operates assuming no a priori knowledge of either signal, presents an additional pathway that can be used to control how information can be processed and communicated.