Alamzadeh Idban, Alexandropoulos George C, Shlezinger Nir, Imani Mohammadreza F
Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85281, USA.
Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 15784, Athens, Greece.
Sci Rep. 2021 Oct 20;11(1):20737. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-99722-x.
Reconfigurable reflective surfaces can alter the propagation environment to improve wireless communication and power transfer. Paramount to this operation-which has attracted much attention recently-is the assumption that the reflective surface has prior knowledge of the propagation environment, for example, the direction/location of the transmitter and the intended receiver(s). To address this need, we propose a reconfigurable reflective metasurface with integrated sensing capabilities. By modifying the tunable meta-atoms constituting the metasurface, we couple small portions of the incident wave to an array of sensing waveguides. As an illustrative example, we demonstrate the ability to use the sampled incident wave to detect its angle of arrival. In addition, we propose and numerically demonstrate the possibility to reduce the required sensors, i.e., the number of radio frequency (RF) chains needed to acquire the sensed signals, by leveraging the inherent metasurface's tunable multiplexing capability. A reconfigurable reflective metasurface with integrated sensing capabilities can benefit wireless communications, wireless power transfer, RF sensing, and smart sensors.
可重构反射面能够改变传播环境，以改善无线通信和功率传输。最近备受关注的这一操作的关键在于，假设反射面事先知晓传播环境，例如发射机和预期接收机的方向/位置。为满足这一需求，我们提出了一种具有集成传感能力的可重构反射超表面。通过修改构成超表面的可调谐超原子，我们将一小部分入射波耦合到传感波导阵列。作为一个示例，我们展示了利用采样的入射波来检测其到达角度的能力。此外，我们提出并通过数值证明了利用超表面固有的可调谐复用能力来减少所需传感器数量的可能性，即获取感测信号所需的射频（RF）链路数量。具有集成传感能力的可重构反射超表面可惠及无线通信、无线功率传输、射频传感和智能传感器。
