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A programmable metasurface antenna that approaches the wireless information mapping limit

Nature Electronics volume 8, pages 179–191 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Digitally programmable metasurfaces are of potential use in next-generation mobile communications due to their ability to perform wireless data transmission without digital-to-analogue conversion or frequency mixing. However, communication networks based on programmable metasurfaces currently suffer from relatively low data transmission rates and low information mapping efficiencies (where the transmitted information per unit switching time is much lower than the information that encodes the programmable pattern). Here we report a programmable metasurface antenna that can approach the theoretical upper limit of the information mapping efficiency. Our approach combines non-recurrent encoding with spatial harmonic retrieval, and we show that the model maps most available programmable patterns to the first-harmonic direction in bijection. As a result, the approach can retrieve all of the encoding information through a single measurement. We also optimize the power efficiency of the communication architecture by using cascaded encoding to amplify the far-field radiation exclusively in the harmonic angles.

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Fig. 1: Information mapping based on programmable metasurface antennas.
Fig. 2: Far-field responses of the programmable metasurface in the normal and first-harmonic directions, where the lengths of the encoding sequences are odd primes.
Fig. 3: Prototype design and far-field responses.
Fig. 4: Experimental results of information mapping scheme based on a programmable metasurface antenna.
Fig. 5: Bit-error-rate evaluation through a simulated data transmission experiment.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant nos. 62288101 (T.J.C.), 62171124 (T.J.C.) and 62225108 (T.J.C.); in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of China under grant nos. 2021YFA1401002 (T.J.C.) and 2018YFA070194 (T.J.C.); in part by the 111 Project under grant no. 111-2-05 (T.J.C.); in part by the Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities under grant nos. 2242022k30004 (T.J.C.), 2242022R10055 (T.J.C.) and 2242022R10185 (T.J.C.); in part by NRF-CRP22-2019-0006 (Y.L.); in part by NRF-CRP23-2019-0007 (Y.L.); in part by the Distinguished Professor Fund of Jiangsu Province under grant no. 1004-YQR24010 (Y.L.); in part by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, NUAA, under grant no. NE2024007 (Y.L.); and in part by The Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its MOE ARF Tier 2 (MOE-T2EP50223-0020, Y.Z.). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of the Ministry of Education, Singapore.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Haotian Wu, Ruiwen Shao.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast University, Nanjing, China

    Haotian Wu, Ruiwen Shao, Zhixia Xu, Jun Wei Wu, Zhenjie Qi, Qiang Cheng & Tie Jun Cui

  2. School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Haotian Wu, Xixi Wang, Yuanjin Zheng & Yu Luo

  3. School of Information Science and Technology, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, China

    Zhixia Xu

  4. ZJU-UIUC Institute, International Campus, Zhejiang University, Haining, China

    Shurun Tan

  5. National Key Laboratory of Microwave Photonics, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China

    Yu Luo

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Contributions

T.J.C. and H.W. conceived the idea. H.W. and R.S. developed and carried out the theoretical analysis. R.S. and H.W. designed the programmable metasurface antenna and carried out the measurements. Z.X. and Z.Q. participated in the experimental design. Z.X., Y.L., Y.Z., J.W.W., S.T., X.W. and Q.C. participated in the analysis and discussion of the results. T.J.C., Y.L. and Y.Z. supervised the whole project. H.W., R.S., Z.X., T.J.C. and Y.L. wrote the paper with input from all other authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yuanjin Zheng, Yu Luo or Tie Jun Cui.

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Nature Electronics thanks Chung-Tse Wu and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Sections 1–21, Figs. 1–19 and Table 1.

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Wu, H., Shao, R., Xu, Z. et al. A programmable metasurface antenna that approaches the wireless information mapping limit. Nat Electron 8, 179–191 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-024-01298-7

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