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Updated: Mar 2, 2026

Uncovering Hidden Dynamics of Natural Photonic Structures Using Holographic Imaging
Published on: March 31, 2022
Holography of Wi-fi Radiation
Philipp M Holl1, Friedemann Reinhard1
1Technische Universität München, Walter Schottky Institut and Physik Department, Am Coulombwall 4, 85748 Garching, Germany.
Abstract:
Wireless data transmission systems such as wi-fi or Bluetooth emit coherent light-electromagnetic waves with a precisely known amplitude and phase. Propagating in space, this radiation forms a hologram-a two-dimensional wave front encoding a three-dimensional view of all objects traversed by the light beam. Here we demonstrate a scheme to record this hologram in a phase-coherent fashion across a meter-sized imaging region. We recover three-dimensional views of objects and emitters by feeding the resulting data into digital reconstruction algorithms. Employing a digital implementation of dark-field propagation to suppress multipath reflection, we significantly enhance the quality of the resulting images. We numerically simulate the hologram of a 10-m-sized building, finding that both localization of emitters and 3D tomography of absorptive objects could be feasible by this technique.
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