Enhancing and Localizing Surface Wave Propagation with Reconfigurable Surfaces

Abstract

As an attempt to develop a reconfigurable surface architecture that can use liquid metal such as Galinstan to shape surface channels on demand, this paper considers a punctured surface where cavities are evenly distributed and can be filled with liquid metal potentially via digitally controlled pumps. In this paper, we look at the benefits of such architecture in terms of surface-wave signal enhancement and isolation, and examine how various system parameters impact the performance using full wave 3-dimensional electromagnetic simulations. It is shown that extraordinary signal shaping can be obtained.

MIMO Evolution Beyond 5G Through Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces and Fluid Antenna Systems

“…In practice, the tubes should be spread all over the entire surface so that high-resolution control of the surface wave on the entire surface can be achieved. A more thorough, practical design using a punctured surface platform is given in [116]. The punctured cavities allow conductive fluid to appear on demand to control the surface waves.…”

On Surface Wave Propagation Characteristics of Porosity-Based Reconfigurable Surfaces

“…A strong selling point of surface wave communications is that reconfigurable surfaces such as the one proposed in [6] are possible so that dynamic channels or pathways can be created on-demand to route the signals in any desirable way. In [6], such reconfigurable surface is achieved by a porous surface in which the cavities can be filled with conductive liquid to form isolated pathways via digitally controlled pumps. There is however lack of understanding of how the porosity pattern affects the propagation performance of the surface.…”