Concept and Application of Metasurface aided Signal Processing

We present a comprehensive review of our recent work on using metasurface-aided signal processing for wireless, short-range, satellite communications, as well as radar systems. By enabling real-time control of metasurfaces operating at microwave and millimeter-wave frequencies – through the use of PIN or varactor diodes driven by programmable FPGAs – we unlock transformative performance improvements. These include reduced system complexity, lower costs, faster computation, and minimal latency, all of which are critical for the advancement of next-generation communication and radar technologies.

In particular, we demonstrate that integrating conventional antennas with intelligent metasurfaces paves the way for the development of a new generation of smart antennas. This integration enhances coverage and supports multi-channel operation in wireless systems, delivers ultra-low latency and near-zero power consumption for short-range IoT applications, and improves beam shaping and steering in satellite communications.

For radar systems, we highlight how time- and/or frequency-modulated metasurfaces can perform a broad range of advanced functions – such as direction-of-arrival estimation, Doppler compensation, deceptive jamming with false targets, radar cross-section manipulation, and pseudo-random coded electronic counter-countermeasures – without the need for complex and computationally intensive digital signal processing. This approach enables electronic countermeasures and counter-countermeasures to operate at the speed of light by directly manipulating electromagnetic waves.