Space-frequency-polarization-division multiplexed wireless communication system using anisotropic space-time-coding digital metasurface

Jun Chen Ke; Xiangyu Chen; Wankai Tang; Ming Zheng Chen; Lei Zhang; Li Wang; Jun Yan Dai; Jin Yang; Jun Wei Zhang; Lijie Wu; Qiang Cheng; Shi Jin; Tie Jun Cui

doi:10.1093/nsr/nwac225

Space-frequency-polarization-division multiplexed wireless communication system using anisotropic space-time-coding digital metasurface

Natl Sci Rev. 2022 Oct 18;9(11):nwac225. doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwac225. eCollection 2022 Nov.

Authors

Jun Chen Ke^{1

2

3}, Xiangyu Chen⁴, Wankai Tang⁴, Ming Zheng Chen^{1

2

3}, Lei Zhang^{1

2

3}, Li Wang^{1

2

3}, Jun Yan Dai^{1

2

3}, Jin Yang⁵, Jun Wei Zhang^{1

2

3}, Lijie Wu^{1

2

3}, Qiang Cheng^{1

2

3}, Shi Jin⁴, Tie Jun Cui^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast University, Nanjing210096, China.
² Institute of Electromagnetic Space, Southeast University, Nanjing210096,China.
³ Frontiers Science Center for Mobile Information Communication and Security, Southeast University, Nanjing210096, China.
⁴ National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University, Nanjing210096, China.
⁵ Southeast University Wuxi Campus, Wuxi214061, China.

Abstract

In the past few years, wireless communications based on digital coding metasurfaces have gained research interest owing to their simplified architectures and low cost. However, in most of the metasurface-based wireless systems, a single-polarization scenario is used, limiting the channel capacities. To solve the problem, multiplexing methods have been adopted, but the system complexity is inevitably increased. Here, a space-frequency-polarization-division multiplexed wireless communication system is proposed using an anisotropic space-time-coding digital metasurface. By separately designing time-varying control voltage sequences for differently oriented varactor diodes integrated on the metasurface, we achieve frequency-polarization-division multiplexed modulations. By further introducing different time-delay gradients to the control voltage sequences in two polarization directions, we successfully obtain space-frequency-polarization-division multiplexed modulations to realize a wireless communication system with a new architecture. The new communication system is designed with compact dual-polarized meta-elements, and can improve channel capacity and space utilization. Experimental results demonstrate the high-performance and real-time transmission capability of the proposed communication system, confirming its potential application in multiple-user collaborative wireless communications.

Keywords: frequency-division multiplexing; polarization-division multiplexing; space-division multiplexing; space-time coding; wireless communication.