Engineered Electromagnetic Metasurfaces in Wireless Communications: Applications, Research Frontiers and Future Directions

Abstract

Surface electromagnetics (SEM), as a sub-discipline of electromagnetic (EM) science, is strongly linked with the ability to manipulate an arbitrary EM wavefront. This exceptional capability of manipulating the surface-bound and free-space EM waves for the guidance and control of anomalous reflection, refraction and transmission has catapulted an abundance of new research frontiers. This has resulted in the realization of many novel applications for modern real-life platforms and the introduction of several new modelling techniques and engineering approaches to give rise to some unconventional devices. Consequently, EM engineered metasurfaces, due to numerous emerging applications, are beginning to revolutionize the EM industry. Recently, the practical usage of metasurfaces has gained a substantial amount of interest and traction for a wide range of applications in microwave, millimetre-wave (mmWave), Terahertz (THz) and even optical wavelengths. This tutorial is aimed at presenting a plethora of EM metasurface applications and research frontiers to illustrate a broader impact of SEM in real-world platforms, advanced communication systems and new devices.

A metasurface-based electronically steerable compact antenna system with reconfigurable artificial magnetic conductor reflector elements

“…PMC materials do not exist in nature as there are no free moving magnetic charges, however, an alternative approach of designing an engineered metasurface 22 that could offer characteristics of a PMC material using the concept of high surface impedance can be modeled by considering an array of parallel resonant circuits. We know from circuit theory that such circuits shunt the current through the inductor at low frequencies and through the capacitor at high frequencies but at a certain resonance frequency they offer a very high impedance governed by the respective and values which can be calculated by .…”

Beam‐steering capability for OAM‐based reflectarray at 5G‐mmWave frequencies

“…Consequently, employing new dimensions for the propagation of electromagnetic (EM) waves can be considered to achieve spatial multiplexing instead of being constrained to a single‐dimension propagation [2]. Recently, angular momentum (AM) has drawn attention to exploiting the spatial distribution of the electric field (E‐field) around the direction of propagation to enhance the capacity of communication channels [3]. AM has two components: spin angular momentum (SAM) and orbital angular momentum (OAM).…”

Reflective Metasurface for 5G mmWave Coverage Enhancement

“…However, millimetre-wave (mm-wave) signals suffer from severe path-loss and typically require a line-of-sight (LoS) connection to achieve reliable transmission [2]. To overcome this, the use of intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) and re-configurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) for mmwave networks can be considered to provide ubiquitous coverage for areas with blocked LoS links [3].…”