Abstract
Metamaterials and their two-dimensional analogues, metasurfaces, have recently attracted enormous attention because of their powerful control over electromagnetic (EM) waves from microwave to visible range. Moreover, by introducing explicit control of its sub-wavelength unit cells, a metamaterial can become programmable. Programmable metamaterials may not only host multiple EM functionalities that can be chosen or combined through simple software directives, but also be provided with means to adapt to the environment or communicate with other metamaterials, thereby enabling a myriad of applications in sensing, imaging, or communications. The realization of such a software-driven cyber-physical vision comes, however, at the cost of significant hardware requirements. In this paper, recent progress in the field of programmable metasurfaces is reviewed, cutting across layers from the application down to the device and technology levels. The main aim is to present the current status, main benefits, and key challenges of this thriving research area with a tutorial spirit and from a hardware perspective.
Highlights
M ETAMATERIALS are artificial structures that enable the realization of novel electromagnetic (EM) components with engineered and even unnatural functionalities
Besides the use of analytical operations on the coding patterns, explained in the subsection below, we find that programmable metasurfaces are amenable to widely used algorithms and optimization techniques, namely:
Intermediate reflection phases can be achieved by changing the bias voltage, having a discrete D/A converter for each unit cell would be both costly and impractical in terms of the space required on the auxiliary Printed Circuit Board (PCB)
Summary
M ETAMATERIALS are artificial structures that enable the realization of novel electromagnetic (EM) components with engineered and even unnatural functionalities. Color versions of one or more of the figures in this article are available online at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org Due to their resonant nature, most existing metamaterials have been typically tailored for a single application working under preset conditions (e.g. electromagnetic cloaking for a fixed angle of incidence and at a particular frequency) and cannot be reused. The control system needs to be powerful enough to cover a representative pool of potential electromagnetic functionalities and applications This imposes severe restrictions on the practicable design space of circuits and systems, encouraging the proposal of smart, metamaterial-aware and opportunistic, highly streamlined solutions at the circuit, system, and full architecture levels.
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