Efficient pulse compressor for Golay complementary sequences

The highly regular structure of binary Golay complementary sequences of length 2^N makes possible a very simple correlator for these sequences. The algorithm called fast Golay correlation (FGC) performs the correlation of the input radar signal with the Golay sequence using only 2.log₂(M) operations per input sample as opposed to M operations required by standard correlators. This algorithm is also valid for complex sequences of the same length. This fast correlator and the good autocorrelation properties of Golay sequences make them the ideal choice for high speed, long sequence pulse compression. Sequence agility on the pulse to pulse basis is also possible at the expense of some added complexity.