The effects of non-uniform loss on time reversal mirrors

Time reversal mirrors work perfectly only for lossless wave propagation; dissipation destroys time-reversal invariance and limits the performance of time-reversal mirrors. Here, a new measure of time-reversal mirror performance is introduced and the adverse effect of dissipation on this performance measure is investigated. The technique of exponential amplification is employed to partially overcome the effect of non-uniform loss distributions, and its success is tested quantitatively using the new performance measure. A numerical model of a star graph is employed to test the applicability of this technique on realizations with various random spatial distributions of loss. A subset of the numerical results are also verified by experimental results from an electromagnetic time-reversal mirror. The exponential amplification technique is a simple way to improve the performance of emerging technologies based on time-reversed wave propagation such as directed communication and wireless power transfer.