Optimized Analog Information Multiplexing Across Custom-Tailored MetaCavity Configurations

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that tailored coding sequences in programmable metacavities significantly improve microwave multiplexing efficiency, reducing measurements needed and enhancing imaging and sensing applications.

Contribution

It introduces a method to optimize coding sequences for programmable metacavities, achieving a flat singular value spectrum to enhance analog multiplexing performance.

Findings

Measurement requirements reduced by a factor of 2.5

Improved multiplexing channel flatness

Enhanced imaging and sensing capabilities

Abstract

Combining tunable metasurfaces with chaotic cavities opens new avenues for finely tailored dynamic control of microwaves with programmable coding metacavities (PCMs). There is currently a strong interest in utilizing PCMs to overcome the notorious difficulty of coherent measurements across large apertures at radiofrequencies, with important applications in imaging and sensing for security screening, medical diagnosis and human-computer interaction. Such approaches rely on multiplexing spatially encoded information across a random sequence of PCM coding patterns for single-port single-frequency acquisition. Here, it is shown that a judiciously tailored rather than random coding sequence is necessary to unlock the full potential of PCMs for analog multiplexing. Specifically, the singular value spectrum of the multiplexing channel matrix is tailored to be perfectly flat - as opposed to downward sloping. In-situ experiments show that thereby the number of necessary measurements to achieve a given reconstruction quality is lowered by a factor of 2.5. Computational imaging and other microwave metrology applications are expected to benefit from the resulting reduction in acquisition time, processing burden and latency. The proposed approach and platform also set the stage for future studies in the emerging field of wave control through engineered wave chaos.