Theory, Analysis, and Design of Metasurfaces for Smart Radio Environments

The term "metasurface" (MTS) denotes an artificial surface constituted by a distribution of electrically small elements that collectively exhibit equivalent homogeneous boundary conditions (BCs) to an interacting electromagnetic field. MTSs are becoming increasingly popular due to the tech...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the IEEE 2022-09, Vol.110 (9), p.1227-1243
Main Authors: Martini, E., Maci, S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
5G mobile communication
Boundary conditions
Couplings
Electromagnetic fields
Fifth generation (5G)
Fresnel region
Impedance
Metamaterials
Metasurfaces
Microwave antennas
Ray tracing
Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces
reflective Intelligent surfaces
sixth generation (6G)
smart radio environment (SRE)
Surface impedance
Surface waves
Tensors
wireless communications
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The term "metasurface" (MTS) denotes an artificial surface constituted by a distribution of electrically small elements that collectively exhibit equivalent homogeneous boundary conditions (BCs) to an interacting electromagnetic field. MTSs are becoming increasingly popular due to the technological simplification that they offer with respect to volumetric metamaterials. In this article, we review the basic theory behind microwave MTSs seen as reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), oriented to the future visionary challenge of a smart radio environment. To this end, two different typologies of MTS are reviewed: surface-wave-based MTSs and nonspecular reflective MTSs. Both types can be effectively characterized using simplified problems that locally match the homogenized, modulated BCs. A different use of these problems allows for an accurate design of radiated and scattered fields. An accurate ray representation is also suggested, which allows for an effective description of the scattered field also in the Fresnel region and for the insertion of the MTS description in ray-tracing tools for network planning. Several examples of practical implementation are shown, and the challenges in applying electronic reconfigurability are discussed.
ISSN:0018-9219
1558-2256
DOI:10.1109/JPROC.2022.3171921