A universal metasurface antenna to manipulate all fundamental characteristics of electromagnetic waves

Abstract

Metasurfaces have promising potential to revolutionize a variety of photonic and electronic device technologies. However, metasurfaces that can simultaneously and independently control all electromagnetics (EM) waves’ properties, including amplitude, phase, frequency, polarization, and momentum, with high integrability and programmability, are challenging and have not been successfully attempted. Here, we propose and demonstrate a microwave universal metasurface antenna (UMA) capable of dynamically, simultaneously, independently, and precisely manipulating all the constitutive properties of EM waves in a software-defined manner. Our UMA further facilitates the spatial- and time-varying wave properties, leading to more complicated waveform generation, beamforming, and direct information manipulations. In particular, the UMA can directly generate the modulated waveforms carrying digital information that can fundamentally simplify the architecture of information transmitter systems. The proposed UMA with unparalleled EM wave and information manipulation capabilities will spark a surge of applications from next-generation wireless systems, cognitive sensing, and imaging to quantum optics and quantum information science.

A hybrid lens to realize electrical real-time super-resolution Imaging

“…The STCMA 42 is adopted here to generate scanning plane waves to illuminate the Mikaelian lens, as shown in Fig. 5a.…”

“…The time gradient for the m = + 1 harmonic conversion can be implemented by loading the corresponding space-time-coding (STC) matrix into the STCMA using an FPGA. Moreover, the polarization of the radiated wave can be altered by linearly superposing the two ± 45 o orthogonal linear polarizations from the two slot openings with different amplitude and phase relationships 42 . The quality of the generated plane waves is veri ed by evaluating the far-eld radiation pattern.…”

“…In this article, we report the electrical real-time dynamic super-resolution focusing for the rst time by combining the properties of the Mikaelian lens [42][43] originating from the CTO and STCMA. The hybrid lens con guration integrates the Mikaelian lens with the STCMA, as drawn in Fig.…”

Single-Layer Programmable Metasurface for Manipulating Both Linearly and Circularly Polarized Electromagnetic Waves

“…Compared with LP waves, circularly polarized (CP) waves can effectively reduce the Faraday rotation effect and avoid polarization mismatch in complex wireless channels. − A programmable metasurface with four varactors per meta-atom is proposed for the manipulations of orthogonally polarized waves and wave-based logic operation for spin control . However, due to the spin state of the reflected CP wave varying along the state of the varactor, dynamic manipulation of CP wave such as CP beam scanning can still not be realized.…”

Co‐Prime Modulation for Space‐Time‐Coding Digital Metasurfaces with Ultralow‐Scattering Characteristics

“…[36] These include beam steering and shaping, [35,37,38] harmonic manipulations, [22,35,37] scatteringsignature control, [35] breaking reciprocity, [39,40] analog signal processing, [41] multiplexed wireless communications, [42,43] radar waveform generation, [44] EM sensing, [45,46] and the development of universal meta-antennas. [47,48] Moreover, the idea of "asynchronous" STC metasurfaces, [49,50] which evolved from the principles of frequency diverse arrays [51,52] and frequency-gradient metasurfaces, [53] was introduced to enable time-dependent wavefront control. This concept entails a constant frequency increment between adjacent elements within the array design and finds applications in temporal beam scanning [49,51,53] and the transmission of multi-frequency signals.…”