Topology-Optimized Metamaterials for Optical Signal Compression
Mohammad Moein Moeini, Dimitrios L. Sounas · 2021 Fifteenth International Congress on Artificial Materials for Novel Wave Phenomena (Metamaterials) · 2021
Optical computing holds a significant position as a legitimate candidate to replace transistor-based computing as we near the end of silicon evolution. Here, for the first time, we unveil all-optical signal compression. The idea relies on wave-matter interaction in a careful inverse topology optimization of metamaterial structure. Inspired by digital image compression, we propose photonic signal compression based on multi-input multi-output metamaterial networks. The photonic metamaterial structure realizes the Haar wavelet transform for an array of beams as input signals and delivers an array of outputs with reduced entropy according to the Haar transform. Numerical demonstration of the photonic compressor is presented with inversely designed $4 \times 4$ network. Our photonic signal compressor may pave the way of replacing traditional digital signal and image processing devices with wave-based meta-structures.