High‐Precision Direction‐of‐Arrival Estimations Using Digital Programmable Metasurface

Abstract

Commonly, phased array antennas are used to provide spatial resolution for direction of arrival (DOA) estimations. However, the phase‐array‐based DOA estimations usually require complicated system architecture and signal processing. Digital programmable metasurfaces (DPMs) can realize flexible spatial modulations of electromagnetic (EM) waves without using massive transceivers, and hence can be used for DOA estimations with much simplified architectures. Here, a mechanism of DPM‐based DOA estimations at Ka band is proposed. A reflective DPM is designed to produce a series of dual beams in random, so as to establish a sensing matrix and sample the incident wave. Orthogonal matched pursuit algorithm is used to estimate DOA from the sparsely sampled datasets. The performances of the DPM‐based DOA estimations are demonstrated by simulations and experiments for the cases of single source and double sources. This work promotes the development of DPMs and is expected to find important applications in radar and wireless communication systems, as well as the joint radar and communication systems.

Direction of arrival sensing enabled by introducing asymmetric surface structures in photodetectors

“…Innovative device-level solutions incorporate metasurfaces into detectors, transforming them into an active circuit element and enabling DOA detection capabilities. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] Despite their high precision, metasurfaces pose challenges related to scalability and manufacturing processes, limiting their application in internet-of-thing (IoT) systems. There is a growing demand for silicon-compatible active DOA-sensitive photodetectors spanning visible to near-infrared (NIR) for high-speed communication and IoT applications.…”

Polarization and direction-of-arrival estimations based on orthogonally polarized digital programmable metasurfaces

“…Due to their advantages in modulating electromagnetic waves, the DPMs have been widely used in wireless communication [17,18], channel estimation [19,20], intelligent sensing [21]. In [22,23], the DPM is orthogonally coded by columns to realize one-dimensional DOA estimation. In [24,25], compressed sensing method is used based on a DPM to realized high-precision DOA estimation.…”

Information Metasurface for Electromagnetic Sensing and Wireless Communications

“…Due to the ability of controlling the electromagnetic waves in space, time, and frequency domains, the information metasurfaces can endow the metasurface‐based systems with the spatial resolution of electromagnetic sensing and enable the metasurface‐based systems to process the communication signals in the time and frequency domains, thus making themselves a perfect platform for the integrated sensing and communication. Several metasurface‐based works involving direction‐of‐arrival estimation, [ 34–37 ] radar imaging [ 38,39 ] and novel wireless communication [ 40,41 ] have already been reported recently, verily proving the significant potential of information metasurface in the information world.…”