Indoor Non‐Line‐of‐Sight Millimeter‐Wave Coverage Enhancements by Field‐Reorganizable Passive Digital Coding Metasurfaces

Abstract

Digital metasurfaces define a novel methodology for metasurface designs by adopting discrete coding meta‐atoms to engineer electromagnetic waves in programmable ways. Herein, a novel field‐reorganizable digital metasurface (FRDM) that can be used to enhance the indoor non‐line‐of‐sight (NLOS) millimeter‐wave (mmWave) signal coverage is presented. The passive binary supercells which can be reorganized with an in situ optimization characteristic to deflect the incoming mmWaves into the blind area with adjustable angles are proposed. The indoor L‐shaped corridor signal coverage simulated by the ray‐tracing technique confirms that the NLOS blind area is effectively communicated using the passive FRDM. Practical environment experiments using FRDMs with different coding sequences are conducted, indicating that the averaged signal intensity is increased by over 10 dB in the NLOS blind area in a wide operating frequency band from 26 to 30 GHz by reorganizing the passive digital metasurfaces. The results suggest that the proposed FRDM enabled by the reorganizable binary supercells is a highly flexible, low‐cost, and extensible solution for B5G and 6G mmWave wireless communications.

Keywords

• 5G mmWave
• coverage enhancement
• digital coding metasurfaces
• non-line-of-sight
• supercells