Progress on intelligent metasurfaces for signal relay, transmitter, and processor

Pursuing higher data rate with limited spectral resources is a longstanding topic that has triggered the fast growth of modern wireless communication techniques. However, the massive deployment of active nodes to compensate for propagation loss necessitates high hardware expenditure, energy consumption, and maintenance cost, as well as complicated network interference issues. Intelligent metasurfaces, composed of a number of subwavelength passive or active meta-atoms, have recently found to be a new paradigm to actively reshape wireless communication environment in a green way, distinct from conventional works that passively adapt to the surrounding.

 

In a new Review published in Light: Science & Applications, a team of scientists, led by Professor Hongsheng Chen and Professor Chao Qian from Zhejiang University have provided an overview on the recent advancements of intelligent metasurfaces for the free management of entire wireless communication environment. We start from channel modelling and survey active approaches to achieve tunable metasurfaces at microwave. We pay special attention to deep learning algorithms for forward prediction of EM scattering and inverse design of metasurface distribution, which is a key to reach true intelligence. Throughout, we provide the experimental implementations on how to reshape wireless communication environment and, more interestingly, underscore how to physically process signal. In the last part, standing from the perspective of electromagnetics, we point out the possible future directions where substantial impact is expected in the coming years and imminent challenges that hinder the further off-the-shelf applications.

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