Toward the Realization of a Programmable Metasurface Absorber Enabled by Custom Integrated Circuit Technology

Kypros M Kossifos,Loukas Petrou,Giorgos Varnava,Do-Hoon Kwon,Manuel Seckel,Fu Liu,Julius Georgiou,Petros Karousios,Dionysios Manessis,Nikolaos V Kantartzis,Odysseas Tsilipakos,Alexandros Pitilakis,Marco A Antoniades,Anna C Tasolamprou

doi:10.1109/access.2020.2994469

Abstract

The realization of a programmable metasurface, enabled by a custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), is presented in this paper. The ASIC is used to provide an adaptive complex impedance load to each of the metasurface unit cells. Various technology nodes are analyzed for the implementation of tunable complex impedance loading elements before one is selected for the final implementation, in which four complex loads are placed within each integrated circuit, and each load is controlled by two digital-to-analog converters. Furthermore, the ASICs populate the back of the metasurface to form a mesh network to enable programmability. The paper includes practical limitations that affect the realization, as well as an example adaptive metasurface absorber that builds upon the practical tuning range of the ASIC. Perfect absorption for both transverse electric and transverse magnetic polarization is demonstrated.

Highlights

Metamaterials are composite materials that exhibit properties that are not found in nature
This paper aims towards the realization of a programmable metasurface architecture that addresses individually each unit cell, and is capable of providing a complex loading impedance
The application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design has been explored for various technology nodes at 350 nm, 180 nm, and 65 nm, where the performance has been evaluated in view of implementing realizable tunable complex impedance loading elements

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Metamaterials are composite materials that exhibit properties that are not found in nature. Metasurfaces, the two-dimensional versions of metamaterials have gained interest by researchers in the past decade Like their three-dimensional counterparts, they have demonstrated many exotic properties such as anomalous reflection [9]–[12], perfect absorption [13] and non-linear reflection [14]. The conceptual design of this work was presented in [30], where individual electronically tunable complex impedance metasurface loading elements, consisting of resistive and capacitive (RC) elements, were embedded in each unit cell to obtain a reconfigurable multifunctional metasurface. The paper shows that the ASIC can be used to create a programmable metasurface, known as a hypersurface [32], which demonstrates programmed perfect absorption, for a range of incident angles for both TE and TM polarizations

PROGRAMMABLE METASURFACE UNIT CELL

MANUFACTURABILITY OF METASURFACE PCB

METASURFACE PERFORMANCE

CONCLUSION