Experimental demonstration of a time-domain digital-coding metasurface for a Doppler cloak

Recent Progress in Reconfigurable and Intelligent Metasurfaces: A Comprehensive Review of Tuning Mechanisms, Hardware Designs, and Applications

Intelligent metasurfaces have gained significant importance in recent years due to their ability to dynamically manipulate electromagnetic (EM) waves. Their multifunctional characteristics, realized by incorporating active elements into the metasurface designs, have huge potential in numerous novel devices and exciting applications. In this article, recent progress in the field of intelligent metasurfaces are reviewed, focusing particularly on tuning mechanisms, hardware designs, and applications. Reconfigurable and programmable metasurfaces, classified as space gradient, time modulated, and space-time modulated metasurfaces, are discussed. Then, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) that can alter their wireless environments, and are considered as a promising technology for sixth-generation communication networks, are explored. Next, the recent progress made in simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (STAR-RISs) that can achieve full-space EM wave control are summarized. Finally, the perspective on the challenges and future directions of intelligent metasurfaces are presented.

Design of an Optically Transparent Microwave Absorber Based on Coding Metasurface

In this paper, a metamaterial absorber with a checkerboard patterned ITO (indium tin oxide) film as the surface is obtained by using flexible and optically transparent wave-absorbing material ITO–PET (polyethylene terephthalate), and a coding arrangement of two basic coding units based on the APS-PSO (Array Pattern Synthesis -Particle Swarm Optimization) algorithm. The surface structure of the absorber consists of ITO rectangular patch structures and ITO circular patch structures (110 Ω/sq). The ITO rectangular patch structures and ITO circular patch structures are symmetrical. The middle layer is made up of two layers of PET and one layer of PMMA, and the bottom surface is covered with a layer of low square resistance ITO film (8 Ω/sq). The experimental results, which are consistent with the simulation results, show that the absorber has superior performance: over 90% absorptance in the 5.06–9.01 GHz band, high transmittance, and a −10 dBsm RCS (radar cross-section) reduction in the 5.3–8.7 GHz band. This design also has polarization insensitivity and angular stability.

Amplification and Manipulation of Nonlinear Electromagnetic Waves and Enhanced Nonreciprocity using Transmissive Space-Time-Coding Metasurface

A novel amplifier-based transmissive space-time-coding metasurface is presented to realize strongly nonlinear controls of electromagnetic (EM) waves in both space and frequency domains, which can manipulate the propagation directions and adjust enhancements of nonlinear harmonic waves and break the Lorenz reciprocity due to the nonreciprocity of unilateral power amplifiers. By cascading the power amplifier between patches placed on two sides of the metasurface, the metasurface can transmit the spatial EM waves in the forward direction while blocking it in the backward direction. Two status of power amplifier biased at the standard working voltage and zero voltage are represented as codes "1" and "0," respectively. By periodically setting adequate code sequences and proportions in the temporal dimension, according to the space-time coding strategy, the amplitudes and phases of the harmonic transmission coefficients can be adjusted in a programmable way. A metasurface prototype is fabricated and measured in the microwave frequency to validate the concept and feasibility. The experimental results show good agreement with the theoretical predictions and numerical simulations. The proposed metasurface can achieve controllable harmonic power enhancements for flexibly configuring the power intensities in space, which enlarge and manipulate the quality of transmitting signals.

Time-coding spread-spectrum reconfigurable intelligent surface for secure wireless communication: theory and experiment

We present a time-coding reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) enabled spread-spectrum secure wireless communication system. The time-coding spread-spectrum RIS is realized by altering the RIS between the two states of a perfect electrical conductor (PEC) and perfect magnetic conductor (PMC), according to a pseudo-random time sequence, respectively. This spectrum spreading function of the time-coding RIS can be simply applied to the secure wireless communication systems, providing a low-cost, easy-implementation encrypting architecture with the two key features of interception prevention and interference suppression. These two features together with the overall spread-spectrum secure wireless communication system are demonstrated by both theoretical analysis and experimental results using a designed 8 × 8 time-coding RIS.

Broadband radar invisibility with time-dependent metasurfaces

Concealing objects from interrogation has been a primary objective since the integration of radars into surveillance systems. Metamaterial-based invisibility cloaking, which was considered a promising solution, did not yet succeed in delivering reliable performance against real radar systems, mainly due to its narrow operational bandwidth. Here we propose an approach, which addresses the issue from a signal-processing standpoint and, as a result, is capable of coping with the vast majority of unclassified radar systems by exploiting vulnerabilities in their design. In particular, we demonstrate complete concealment of a 0.25 square meter moving metal plate from an investigating radar system, operating in a broad frequency range approaching 20% bandwidth around the carrier of 1.5 GHz. The key element of the radar countermeasure is a temporally modulated coating. This auxiliary structure is designed to dynamically and controllably adjust the reflected phase of the impinging radar signal, which acquires a user-defined Doppler shift. A special case of interest is imposing a frequency shift that compensates for the real Doppler signatures originating from the motion of the target. In this case the radar will consider the target static, even though it is moving. As a result, the reflected echo will be discarded by the clutter removal filter, which is an inherent part of any modern radar system that is designed to operate in real conditions. This signal-processing loophole allows rendering the target invisible to the radar even though it scatters electromagnetic radiation.