Intelligent Wave Systems based on Programmable Metamaterials

Philipp Del_Hougne

I will discuss some of our recent results on the conception of intelligent wave systems designed to extract and/or process and/or transfer information through tailored wave-matter interactions.

First, I will show how reflectionless scattering singularities (e.g., coherent perfect absorption) can be implemented with unprecedented flexibility and precision in complex scattering systems with strong modal overlap that are massively parametrized by a programmable metasurface. I will discuss applications to analog wave-based computing and reflectionless programmable signal routing.

Second, I will explain how to optimize the extraction of task-specific information from a scene through coherent illuminations. This involves a task-specific end-to-end optimization of physical trainable parameters (programmable meta-atoms of the measurement hardware) and digital trainable weights. In contrast to task-agnostic compressed sensing, this learned-sensing technique seeks purposefully non-isometric embeddings of the scene in the measured data.

Third, if time allows, I will turn to information-transfer applications (i.e., wireless communications). I will show how metasurface-programmable wireless networks-on-chip can equalize wireless on-chip channels over-the-air to wirelessly boost data exchange between computing cores. Finally, I will demonstrate how programmable metasurfaces enable the conception of massive backscatter communication systems which transfer information by modulating stray ambient waves.

Philipp del Hougne is a tenured CNRS researcher affiliated with the Université de Rennes 1, France. He graduated in physics from Imperial College London, United Kingdom, and was awarded a doctorate by Université Sorbonne Paris Cité, France. He subsequently held postdoctoral positions in Nice and Rennes, France, and Lausanne, Switzerland. He currently leads the Intelligent Wave Systems group at CNRS – IETR (Université de Rennes 1), France, which combines programmable-metamaterial hardware with artificial-intelligence algorithms and mesoscopic-scattering theory to mold the flow of information through tailored wave-matter interactions for information extraction (imaging, sensing, localization), information processing (analog wave-based computing), and information transfer (wireless communications).