What the study reports
A single-port, single-layer PCB aperture arranges 800 H-shaped radiators from six dispersive unit-cell types in nonrepeating rows. Across 18–28 GHz, the changing guided-wave phase and leakage generate low-redundancy near-field masks without switches or mechanical motion. The 112.0 by 116.4 by 0.762 mm prototype is characterized electromagnetically and used to reconstruct representative metallic targets, with reported practical two-target separability of 5 mm in both transverse directions at the selected imaging plane. [1]
What this does not establish
The demonstrated resolution belongs to the calibrated laboratory geometry, frequency sweep, receiver arrangement, target class and 135 mm imaging plane; it is not a universal spatial-resolution specification. Reconstruction uses measured field masks and regularized inversion, and the experiment does not establish real-time acquisition, through-wall performance, biomedical imaging or operation with arbitrary lossy objects.
Our engineering reading
In our interpretation, the main contribution is hardware-efficient diversity: dispersion and static spatial disorder replace active coding elements. System comparisons should include calibration stability, sweep time, receiver complexity, reconstruction robustness and useful field of view, not bandwidth alone.
Editorial interpretation; not an additional measured result.Broadband Near-Field Computational Microwave Imaging Enabled by Nonperiodic Dispersive Unit-Cell Loading in a Passive Metasurface
Advanced Electronic Materials · 8 October 2026
DOI: 10.1002/aelm.70606- Wiley open full text PRIMARY SOURCE · publisher · checked 13 October 2026
- Crossref bibliographic metadata · metadata · checked 13 October 2026
Scientific coverage: Publisher open full text; design, modelling, measured masks, reconstruction method and limitations reviewed.. Source check: 13 October 2026.
Metadata enrichment does not imply that the full scientific methods were reviewed.