Metamaterial Microwave Camera

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Metamaterials

Fashioned from plastics

or metals,
metamaterials behave
in ways that ordinary
materials naturally do
not.

Some can cloak

objects. Others can
reveal them.

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Super fast Micrwave Vision

Light doesnt pass

through walls, clothing
or weather like fog
microwaves do.

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Why needed or Preferable?

A tradional digital camera relies on lenses that guide light
to detectors comprising of millions of pixels.
The system work great for visible light as optical
wavelengths are short and can fit in tiny spaces.
But for longer wavelengths, such as micro or millimeter
waves, building a camera that works similarly to an optical
camera, would require millions of expensive and larger
detectors.
So current microwave imagers/scanners are behemoth in
size, pricing and maintenance efforts.

Applications
1-D, 40 cm aperture
made from a copper
based metameterial.
No image compression
Needs no lens
No moving parts

Working Principle
The device illuminates objects with K-band
microwave radiation (18.5 to 25 GHz) and
images the reflections in a single pass.
The metamaterial aperture shuttles these
reflected microwaves from the scene to a
conneceted computer, which then reconstructs
the scene in 2-D image using mathematical
algorithms developed by the team at Duke
university.
The whole process takes just 100 milliseconds.

References

http://people.ee.duke.edu/~drsmith/gallery.htm
http://www.zmescience.com/research/microwave-metamaterial-detec
tor-real-time-imaging-32143243/
http://www.wired.com/2013/01/new-metamaterial-camera/
http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/146247-future-imagingtools-replace-lens-metamaterials
http://www.bytronic.com/blog/new-technology-metamaterials-andvision-systems

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