Direct electromagnetic information processing with planar diffractive neural network | Science Advances

Diffractive neural network in electromagnetic wave–driven system has attracted great attention due to its ultrahigh parallel computing capability and energy efficiency. However, recent neural networks based on the diffractive framework still face the bottlenecks of misalignment and relatively large size limiting their further applications. Here, we propose a planar diffractive neural network (pla-NN) with a highly integrated and conformal architecture to achieve direct signal processing in the microwave frequency. On the basis of printed circuit fabrication process, the misalignment could be effectively circumvented while enabling flexible extension for multiple conformal and stacking designs. We first conduct validation on the fashion-MNIST dataset and experimentally build up a system using the proposed network architecture for direct recognition of different geometry structures in the electromagnetic space. We envision that the presented architecture, once combined with the advanced dynamic maneuvering techniques and flexible topology, would exhibit unlimited potentials in the areas of high-performance computing, wireless sensing, and flexible wearable electronics.