Temporal microwave ghost imaging using a reconfigurable disordered cavity

Abstract

We propose and experimentally demonstrate the principles for microwave temporal ghost imaging using a disordered cavity loaded with a reconfigurable metasurface. The metasurface behaves as a dynamically reconfigurable surface impedance distribution on one wall of the cavity, effectively perturbing the boundary conditions of the cavity and altering the cavity mode distribution. A microwave signal that passes through the cavity is thus modulated by the changing modal distribution. Assuming that this modulation can happen at a rate faster than the receiver temporal resolution, we show that we can recover the original signal by correlating the pre-recorded response of the modulated cavity with that collected by a slow receiver. This device may find applications in encrypting or compressing microwave signals at the hardware level.