Millimeter-wave spotlight imager using dynamic holographic metasurface antennas

Computational imaging systems leverage generalized measurements to produce high-fidelity images, enabling novel and often lower cost hardware platforms at the expense of increased processing. However, obtaining full resolution images across a large field-of-view (FOV) can lead to slow reconstruction times, limiting system performance where faster frame rates are desired. In many imaging scenarios, the highest resolution is needed only in smaller subdomains of interest within a scene, suggesting an aperture supporting multiple modalities of image capture with different resolutions can provide a path to system optimization. We explore this concept in the context of millimeter-wave imaging, presenting the design and simulation of a single frequency (75 GHz), multistatic, holographic spotlight aperture integrated into a K-band (17.5-26.5 GHz), frequency-diverse imager. The spotlight aperture - synthesized using an array of dynamically tuned, holographic, metasurface antennas - illuminates a constrained region-of-interest (ROI) identified from a low-resolution image, extracting a high-fidelity image of the constrained-ROI with a minimum number of measurement modes. The designs of both the static, frequency-diverse sub-aperture and the integrated dynamic spotlight aperture are evaluated using simulation techniques developed for large-scale synthetic apertures.