  The purpose of FFREE - the new optical bench devoted to experiments on
high-contrast imaging at LAOG - consists in the validation of algorithms based
on off-line calibration techniques and adaptive optics (AO) respectively for
the wavefront measurement and its compensation. The aim is the rejection of the
static speckles pattern arising in a focal plane after a diffraction
suppression system (based on apodization or coronagraphy) by wavefront
pre-compensation. To this aim, FFREE has been optimized to minimize Fresnel
propagation over a large near infrared (NIR) bandwidth in a way allowing
efficient rejection up to the AO control radius, it stands then as a
demonstrator for the future implementation of the optics that will be common to
the scientific instrumentation installed on EPICS.
