A team led by researchers from the University of Glasgow has developed a wireless communications antenna which combines the unique properties of metamaterials with sophisticated signal processing to deliver a new peak of performance.
In a new early view paper published in the IEEE Open Journal of Antennas and Propagation, the researchers showcase their development of a prototype digitally coded dynamic metasurface antenna, or DMA, controlled through high-speed field-programmable gate array (FPGA).
Their DMA demonstrated at the operating frequency of 60 GHz millimetre-wave (mmWave) band – the portion of the spectrum reserved by international law for use in industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) applications. The antenna’s ability to operate in the higher mmWave band could enable it to become a key piece of hardware in the still-developing field of advanced beamforming metasurface antennas.
It could help future 6G networks deliver ultra-fast data transfer with high reliability, ensuring high-quality service and seamless connectivity, and enable new applications in communication, sensing, and imaging.
The DMA’s high-frequency operation is made possible by specially-designed metamaterials – structures which have been carefully engineered to maximise their ability to interact with electromagnetic waves in ways that are impossible in naturally-occurring materials.
The DMA uses specially-designed, fully-tunable metamaterial elements which have been carefully engineered to manipulate electromagnetic waves through software control, creating an advanced class of leaky-wave antennas capable of high-frequency reconfigurable operation.
The matchbook-sized prototype uses high-speed interconnects with simultaneous parallel control of individual metamaterial elements through FPGA programming. The DMA can shape its communications beams and create multiple beams at once, switching in nanoseconds to ensure network coverage remains stable.
Professor Qammer H. Abbasi, co-director of the University of Glasgow’s Communications, Sensing and Imaging Hub, is one of the paper’s lead authors. He said: “This meticulously designed prototype is a very exciting development in the field of next-generation adaptive antennas, which leaps beyond previous cutting-edge developments in reconfigurable programmable antennas.
The capabilities of the DMA design could find use in patient monitoring and care, where it could help directly monitor patients’ vital signs and keep track of their movements.
It could also enable improved integrated sensing and communications devices for use in high-resolution radar and to help autonomous vehicles like self-driving cars and drones safely find their way around on the roads and in the air.
The improved speed of data transfer could even help create holographic imaging, allowing convincing 3D models of people and objects to be projected anywhere in the world in real time.
