Versatile Low Frequency Magnetoelectric Antenna with Memory in Computing Ability and Internet of Underground Things Application

Internet of Underground Things (IoUT) requires numerous devices performing different tasks such as sensing, computation, storage and transmission etc., which is crucial for various industrial and agricultural applications. However, the IoUT nodes based on conventional von Neumann architecture and radio frequency antenna bring severe power consumption and short communication distance issues due to such factors as separated computation, storage and communication units, and severely attenuated radio frequency electromagnetic wave in the high loss underground environment, respectively. Therefore, a low frequency (LF) magnetoelectric (ME) antenna with memory in computing (MIC) ability is proposed in this study, which consists of Ni/Metglas/Pb(Zr0.3Ti0.7)O3-1 mol% Mn/Metglas/Ni laminate. First, a nonlinear electromechanical equivalent circuit model is studied to understand the operational principles of MIC antenna. Meanwhile the remanent impedance of MIC antenna modulated with electric field pulses is leveraged to enable functions of multistate nonvolatile memory and all 16 nonvolatile Boolean logic operations with a single device, facilitating the power efficient edge computing application beyond von Neumann architecture. Furthermore, the stored information of MIC antenna can be directly modulated into the radiated magnetic field through nonlinear converse magnetoelectric effect without additional modulator. Specifically, the stored information of MIC antenna buried underground can be wirelessly transmitted with the distance of 13 m at the power consumption of 884 mW, which outperforms the state-of-art antennas adopted by the Lora and ZigBee technologies. The proposed antenna provides a promising candidate to realize the low-power IoUT system integrating nonvolatile edge computing and LF communication technology.