Controllable Enhancements of Wi-Fi Signals at Desired Locations Without Extra Energy Using Programmable Metasurface

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a novel, cost-effective method to dynamically control Wi-Fi signal distribution at desired locations using a programmable metasurface, without additional energy consumption.

Contribution

It introduces an electronically programmable phase-binary metasurface and an optimization algorithm for dynamic, arbitrary Wi-Fi signal manipulation at 2.4GHz.

Findings

Successful experimental control of Wi-Fi signal distribution

Enhanced Wi-Fi signals at targeted locations

Real-time, arbitrary spatial energy manipulation

Abstract

We present for the first time an experimental demonstration on the energy allocation of commodity Wi-Fi signals in a programmable and inexpensive way. To that end, we design an electronically-programmable phase-binary coding metasurface, working at the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi frequency band, to manipulate dynamically and arbitrarily the spatial distribution of commodity Wi-Fi signals. Meanwhile, an efficient algorithm is developed to find the optimal coding sequence of the programmable metasurface such that the spatial energy of commodity Wi-Fi signals can be instantly controlled in a desirable way. Selected experimental results based on an IEEE 802.11n commercial Wi-Fi protocol have been provided to demonstrate the performance of the developed proof-of-concept system in enhancing the commodity Wi-Fi signals dynamically and arbitrarily. It could be expected that the proposed strategy will pave a promising way for wireless communications, future smart home, and so on.