Multi-Beamforming Using Metasurface-Antenna Co-Designed with Energy-Efficient Adaptive Electronics

‘Smart Integrated Electromagnetic Skins’, acting as antenna arrays that are conformal to the shape of the object they are mounted on, are introduced. The underlying technological solution offers a replacement for the concept of “elements” in antenna arrays. The radiating current flows over a textured surface (“Metasurface”) that is fed by a limited number of source points (or “ports”), through which the electronics can sense the near-field and far-field electromagnetic environment and adapt to it. The proposed approach of co-design and co-integration of metasurface (MTS) antennas with front-end-modules (FEM) accounts for thermal-dissipation management and accommodates curved and flexible electronic substrates. The resulting requirements call for new functional materials engineering with challenges in relation with processes and circuits EM-Thermal-Mechanical co-design and co-assembly. New designs and realizations of leaky-wave (LW) MTS antennas fed at multiple points are manufactured and experimentally evaluated. This work demonstrates for the first time, co-integration of dual-channel MTS antenna and transceiver FEMs using 3D heterogeneous packaging with the benefits of Multi-Feed (MF) Chip-in-Connector (CiC) technologies. At the system-level, the measured performance of MTS antennas co-integrated with adaptive FEMs is reported for dual-beam applications.