Exploration of Intercell Wireless Millimeter-Wave Communication in the Landscape of Intelligent Metasurfaces

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 7; pp. 122931 - 122948
• Main Authors: Tasolamprou, Anna C., Pitilakis, Alexandros, Abadal, Sergi, Tsilipakos, Odysseas, Timoneda, Xavier, Taghvaee, Hamidreza, Sajjad Mirmoosa, Mohammad, Liu, Fu, Liaskos, Christos, Tsioliaridou, Ageliki, Ioannidis, Sotiris, Kantartzis, Nikolaos V., Manessis, Dionysios, Georgiou, Julius, Cabellos-Aparicio, Albert, Alarcon, Eduard, Pitsillides, Andreas, Akyildiz, Ian F., Tretyakov, Sergei A., Economou, Eleftherios N., Kafesaki, Maria, Soukoulis, Costas M.
• Format: Journal Article Publication
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE); Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
• Subjects: Actuation; Antenes de microones; Antenes i agrupacions d'antenes; antennas and propagation; Artificial intelligence; artificially intelligent materials; Circuits; Communication; Communication channels; Communication system security; Comunicació sense fil, Sistemes de; Electromagnetics; Electronic circuits; Enginyeria de la telecomunicació; Fabrics; Hyperspaces; intercell wireless networks; Metal plates; Metasurfaces; Microwave antennas; millimeter wave wireless communications; Millimeter waves; Mm-wave communications; mm-wave devices; Radiocomunicació i exploració electromagnètica; Reactance; Software; software defined metasurfaces; Stability; Surface resistance; Telemàtica i xarxes d'ordinadors; Transceivers; Unit cell; Wireless communication; Wireless communication systems; Wireless communications; Wireless sensor networks; Àrees temàtiques de la UPC
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2933355

Software-defined metasurfaces are electromagnetically ultra-thin, artificial components that can provide engineered and externally controllable functionalities. The control over these functionalities is enabled by the metasurface tunability, which is implemented by embedded electronic circuits that modify locally the surface resistance and reactance. Integrating controllers within the metasurface able them to intercommunicate and adaptively reconfigure, thus imparting a desired electromagnetic operation, opens the path towards the creation of an artificially intelligent (AI) fabric where each unit cell can have its own sensing, programmable computing, and actuation facilities. In this work we take a crucial step towards bringing the AI metasurface technology to emerging applications, in particular exploring the wireless mm-wave intercell communication capabilities in a software-defined HyperSurface designed for operation in the microwave regime. We examine three different wireless communication channels within the landscape of the reflective metasurface: Firstly, in the layer where the control electronics of the HyperSurface lie, secondly inside a dedicated layer enclosed between two metallic plates, and, thirdly, inside the metasurface itself. For each case we examine the physical implementation of the mm-wave transceiver nodes, we quantify communication channel metrics, and we identify complexity vs. performance trade-offs.