Toward frugal calibration protocols for intelligent programmable meta-imagers

Programmable meta-imagers based on reconfigurable intelligent surfaces or dynamic metasurface antennas constitute a promising low-cost hardware layer for agile intelligent sensing in applications including security screening. However, their calibration via near-field scans is tedious, time consuming and not easily compatible with large-scale operations. In this talk, we review recent efforts on physical-model based wave control in metasurface-tunable complex media and discuss its applications to the frugal calibration of intelligent meta-imagers. Frugal here refers to the number of calibration measurements, the number of the parameters to be stored for later use, and the requirement or not for phase-sensitive measurements.