Source-linked AI summary
Programmable Metasurface-based RF Chain-free 8PSK Wireless Transmitter
Wankai Tang, Jun Yan Dai, Mingzheng Chen, Xiang Li, Qiang Cheng, Shi Jin, Kai-Kit Wong, Tie Jun Cui
TL;DR
High RF-chain hardware complexity increases cost and power consumption in wireless transmitters. This paper develops and experimentally validates a programmable-metasurface 8PSK transmitter that achieves 6.144 Mbps over the air while eliminating mixers, filters, and wideband power amplifiers.
Problem
Large numbers of high-performance RF chains increase hardware complexity, cost, and power consumption in wireless communications.
Method
The paper develops a programmable-metasurface 8PSK transmitter using 360° reflected-wave phase coverage and DAC-controlled unit cells to modulate an incident single-tone carrier.
Results
6.144 Mbps over-the-air transmission was achieved with comparable BER performance to the conventional architecture while eliminating mixers, filters, and wideband power amplifiers.
Takeaways & Limitations
The demonstrated architecture offers a cost-effective transmitter design with lower hardware complexity for future wireless communications.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
In this letter, a wireless transmitter using the new architecture of programmable metasurface is presented. The proposed transmitter does not require any filter, nor wideband mixer or wideband power amplifier, thereby making it a promising hardware architecture for cost-effective wireless communications systems in the future. Using experimental results, we demonstrate that a programmable metasurface-based 8-phase shift-keying (8PSK) transmitter with 8*32 phase adjustable unit cells can achieve 6.144 Mbps data rate over the air at 4.25 GHz with a comparable bit error rate (BER) performance as the conventional approach without channel coding, but with less hardware complexity.