Dynamic Metasurface Antennas for 6G Extreme Massive MIMO Communications

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of reconfigurable metasurface antennas for 6G massive MIMO systems, highlighting their potential to enable scalable, low-cost, and power-efficient wireless communication with advanced signal processing.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of active metasurface antennas for wireless communications, expanding their application beyond passive reflectors to dynamic, reconfigurable transceivers.

Findings

Metasurfaces can serve as active antennas with signal processing capabilities.

Advantages include scalability, reduced cost, and power consumption.

Several challenges remain in practical implementation.

Abstract

Next generation wireless base stations and access points will transmit and receive using extremely massive numbers of antennas. A promising technology for realizing such massive arrays in a dynamically controllable and scalable manner with reduced cost and power consumption utilizes surfaces of radiating metamaterial elements, known as metasurfaces. To date, metasurfaces are mainly considered in the context of wireless communications as passive reflecting devices, aiding conventional transceivers in shaping the propagation environment. This article presents an alternative application of metasurfaces for wireless communications as active reconfigurable antennas with advanced analog signal processing capabilities for next generation transceivers. We review the main characteristics of metasurfaces used for radiation and reception, and analyze their main advantages as well as their effect on the ability to reliably communicate in wireless networks. As current studies unveil only a portion of the potential of metasurfaces, we detail a list of exciting research and implementation challenges which arise from the application of metasurface antennas for wireless transceivers.