Future wireless networks are expected to constitute a distributed intelligent wireless communications, sensing, and computing platform, which will have the challenging requirement of interconnecting the physical and digital worlds in a seamless and sustainable manner. Currently, two main factors prevent wireless network operators from building such networks: (1) the lack of control of the wireless environment, whose impact on the radio waves cannot be customized, and (2) the current operation of wireless radios, which consume a lot of power because new signals are generated whenever data has to be transmitted. In this paper, we challenge the usual “more data needs more power and emission of radio waves” status quo, and motivate that future wireless networks necessitate a smart radio environment: a transformative wireless concept, where the environmental objects are coated with artificial thin films of electromagnetic and reconfigurable material (that are referred to as reconfigurable intelligent meta-surfaces), which are capable of sensing the environment and of applying customized transformations to the radio waves. Smart radio environments have the potential to provide future wireless networks with uninterrupted wireless connectivity, and with the capability of transmitting data without generating new signals but recycling existing radio waves. We will discuss, in particular, two major types of reconfigurable intelligent meta-surfaces applied to wireless networks. The first type of meta-surfaces will be embedded into, e.g., walls, and will be directly controlled by the wireless network operators via a software controller in order to shape the radio waves for, e.g., improving the network coverage. The second type of meta-surfaces will be embedded into objects, e.g., smart t-shirts with sensors for health monitoring, and will backscatter the radio waves generated by cellular base stations in order to report their sensed data to mobile phones. These functionalities will enable wireless network operators to offer new services without the emission of additional radio waves, but by recycling those already existing for other purposes. This paper overviews the current research efforts on smart radio environments, the enabling technologies to realize them in practice, the need of new communication-theoretic models for their analysis and design, and the long-term and open research issues to be solved towards their massive deployment. In a nutshell, this paper is focused on discussing how the availability of reconfigurable intelligent meta-surfaces will allow wireless network operators to redesign common and well-known network communication paradigms.

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Smart radio environments empowered by reconfigurable AI meta-surfaces: an idea whose time has come

Antenna Theory And Design

Electromagnetic Metamaterials: Transmission Line Theory and Microwave Applications. By Christophe Caloz and Tatsuo Itoh.

This paper presents a literature review on recent applications and design aspects of the intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) in the future wireless networks. Conventionally, the network optimization has been limited to transmission control at two endpoints, i.e., end users and network controller. The fading wireless channel is uncontrollable and becomes one of the main limiting factors for performance improvement. The IRS is composed of a large array of scattering elements, which can be individually configured to generate additional phase shifts to the signal reflections. Hence, it can actively control the signal propagation properties in favor of signal reception, and thus realize the notion of a smart radio environment. As such, the IRS’s phase control, combined with the conventional transmission control, can potentially bring performance gain compared to wireless networks without IRS. In this survey, we first introduce basic concepts of the IRS and the realizations of its reconfigurability. Then, we focus on applications of the IRS in wireless communications. We overview different performance metrics and analytical approaches to characterize the performance improvement of IRS-assisted wireless networks. To exploit the performance gain, we discuss the joint optimization of the IRS’s phase control and the transceivers’ transmission control in different network design problems, e.g., rate maximization and power minimization problems. Furthermore, we extend the discussion of IRS-assisted wireless networks to some emerging use cases. Finally, we highlight important practical challenges and future research directions for realizing IRS-assisted wireless networks in beyond 5G communications.

Toward Smart Wireless Communications via Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces: A Contemporary Survey

Apparatus, systems and techniques for using composite left and right handed (CRLH) metamaterial (MTM) structure antenna elements and arrays to provide radiation pattern shaping and beam switching.

Metamaterial antenna arrays with radiation pattern shaping and beam switching

A compact one-dimensional phase shifter is proposed using alternating sections of negative refractive index (NRI) metamaterials and printed transmission lines (TL). The NRI metamaterial sections consist of lumped element capacitors and inductors, arranged in a dual TL (high-pass) configuration. By adjusting the NRI-medium lumped element values, the phase shift can be tailored to a given specification. Periodic analysis is applied to the structure and design equations are presented for the determination of the lumped element parameters for any arbitrary phase shift. To validate the design, various phase shifters are simulated and tested in coplanar waveguide (CPW) technology. It is demonstrated that small variations in the NRI-medium lumped element values can produce positive, negative or 0/spl deg/ phase shifts while maintaining the same short overall length. Thus, the new phase shifter offers some significant advantages over conventional delay lines: it is more compact in size, it exhibits a linear phase response around the design frequency, it can incur a phase lead or lag which is independent of the length of the structure and it exhibits shorter group delays.

Compact linear lead/lag metamaterial phase shifters for broadband applications

A compact (/spl lambda//sub 0//11 footprint) and low-profile (/spl lambda//sub 0//28 height) metamaterial ring antenna is proposed using two metamaterial unit cells. Each constituent unit cell consists of negative-refractive-index (NRI) microstrip transmission lines (TL) designed to incur a zero insertion phase at the antenna design frequency. This allows the inductive posts to ground, which act as the main radiating elements, to be fed in phase. Hence, the antenna operates as two closely spaced monopoles that are fed in phase through a compact feed network. An embedded matching network ensures good VSWR performance. The theoretical performance of the antenna is verified by full-wave simulations and experimental data obtained from a fabricated prototype at 1.77 GHz. The antenna offers a 120 MHz -10 dB bandwidth and a measured efficiency exceeding 50%.

A compact and low-profile metamaterial ring antenna with vertical polarization

A compact tri-band planar monopole antenna is proposed that employs reactive loading and a ?defected? ground-plane structure. The reactive loading of the monopole is inspired by transmission-line based metamaterials (TL-MTM), which enables the loaded antenna to operate in two modes. The first resonance exhibits a dipolar mode over the lower WiFi band of 2.40 GHz - 2.48 GHz, and the second resonance has a monopolar mode over the 5.15-5.80 GHz upper WiFi band. Full-wave analysis shows that the currents of the two modes are orthogonal to each other, resulting in orthogonal radiation patterns in the far field. The feature of a ?defected? ground-plane, formed by appropriately cutting an L-shaped slot out of one of the CPW ground-planes, leads to the third resonance that covers the WiMAX band at 3.30-3.80 GHz. Air bridges at the intersection between the antenna and the CPW feedline ensure a balanced current. A fabricated prototype has compact dimensions of 20.0 mm × 23.5 mm × 1.59 mm, and exhibits good agreement between the measured and simulated S parameters and radiation patterns. The measured radiation efficiencies are 67.4% at 2.45 GHz, 86.3% at 3.50 GHz and 85.3% at 5.50 GHz.

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A Compact Tri-Band Monopole Antenna With Single-Cell Metamaterial Loading

A metamaterial 1:4 series power divider that provides equal power split to all four output ports over a large bandwidth is presented, which can be extended to an arbitrary number of output ports. The divider comprises four nonradiating metamaterial lines in series, incurring a zero insertion phase over a large bandwidth, while simultaneously maintaining a compact length of /spl lambda//sub 0//8. Compared to a series power divider employing conventional one-wavelength long meandered transmission lines to provide in-phase signals at the output ports, the metamaterial divider provides a 165% increase in the input return-loss bandwidth and a 155% and 154% increase in the through-power bandwidth to ports 3 and 4, respectively. In addition, the metamaterial divider is significantly more compact, occupying only 2.6% of the area that the transmission line divider occupies. The metamaterial and transmission line dividers exhibit comparable insertion losses.

A broadband series power divider using zero-degree metamaterial phase-shifting lines

A metamaterial balun that converts a single-ended input to a differential output over a large bandwidth is presented. The device also exhibits excellent return loss, isolation, and through characteristics over the same frequency band. The balun comprises a Wilkinson divider, followed by a +90/spl deg/ negative-refractive-index (NRI) metamaterial (MM) phase-shifting line along the top branch, and a -90/spl deg/ MM phase-shifting line along the bottom branch. Utilizing MM lines for both the +90/spl deg/ and -90/spl deg/ branches allows the slopes of their phase responses to be matched, resulting in a broadband differential output signal. The theoretical performance of the balun is verified through circuit simulations and measurements of a fabricated prototype at 1.5 GHz. The MM balun exhibits a measured differential output phase bandwidth (180/spl deg//spl plusmn/10/spl deg/) of 1.16 GHz (77%), from 1.17 to 2.33 GHz. The measured isolation and return loss for all three ports remain below -10 dB over a bandwidth in excess of 2 GHz, while the output quantities |S/sub 21/| and |S/sub 31/| remain above -4 dB from 0.5 to 2.5 GHz.

Marco A. Antoniades

Papers

Compact linear lead/lag metamaterial phase shifters for broadband applications

A compact and low-profile metamaterial ring antenna with vertical polarization

A Compact Tri-Band Monopole Antenna With Single-Cell Metamaterial Loading

A broadband series power divider using zero-degree metamaterial phase-shifting lines

A broadband Wilkinson balun using microstrip metamaterial lines