SearcharxivSearch

arXiv subjects

Hiroki Wakatsuchi

Publications and source records attributed to Hiroki Wakatsuchi.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Numerical Validation of a MOSFET-Based Control Circuit for High-Power Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces for Wireless Power Transfer Applications

Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) have attracted considerable attention because of their ability to dynamically control electromagnetic wave propagation. While most existing IRSs have been developed for low-power communication and sensing applications, their extension to high-power wireless power transfer (WPT) environments remains largely unexplored, as the high induced currents can damage or saturate the sensitive control elements, disrupting their tuning functionality. Here, we propose a metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor-based (MOSFET-based) binary control circuit for IRSs operating at 2.4 GHz that can withstand input power levels exceeding 1 W per unit cell. The control circuit employs a back-to-back MOSFET switching topology with series and parallel capacitors to suppress impedance variations arising from device nonlinearity while maintaining a reflection phase difference of approximately 180 degrees between the ON and OFF states. A theoretical model based on transmission lines is developed and validated against full-wave co-simulations incorporating nonlinear SPICE device models. The dynamic range is evaluated with respect to both the rated current and the reflection phase difference, demonstrating stable operation up to 1.25 W. Supercell-level beam steering is further demonstrated through far-field simulations, confirming active control of the reflection angle via switching pattern reconfiguration. These results establish a foundation for the deployment of IRSs in high-power WPT scenarios.

physics.app-ph

Metasurface Tape for Efficient Millimeter-Wave Power Transfer via Surface-Wave Propagation

Millimeter-wave technologies are essential for future high-speed wireless communications. However, a fundamental challenge remains in the form of severe free-space path loss, where the power density decreases inversely with the square of the distance r (i.e., proportional to r^{-2}) as a spherical dependence. To overcome this limitation, we propose a flexible metasurface tape that is designed to guide electromagnetic energy as surface waves. Unlike conventional free-space propagation, this engineered metasurface confines the field to a subwavelength interface, thereby altering the power decay law to a circular dependence (i.e., proportional to r^{-1}). We numerically and experimentally, for the first time, demonstrate this concept using a periodic grounded-patch array fabricated on a flexible substrate and operated at approximately 100 GHz. The measurement results show that the metasurface tape significantly increases the transmitted power, yielding an average rate of improvement of approximately 40 per meter in received power relative to the free-space baseline in our measurement geometry (e.g., 29-dB increase at 2 m). This increase is realized over a broad bandwidth from 95 GHz to 105 GHz (i.e., approximately 10 %), accommodating wideband modulation schemes required for high-data-rate applications. The flexible, lightweight nature of the tape allows it to be easily installed on diverse surfaces. Our demonstration indicates that the metasurface tape is a promising platform for extending the effective range of millimeter-wave systems, thus offering a robust solution to the path-loss bottleneck in next-generation wireless networks.

physics.app-ph

An Experimental Validation of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces Achieving Pulse Width-Modulated Singular Reflection Angles Without External Power Sources

In this study, we introduce a design concept that leverages pulse width variation to enable a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) and to autonomously switch reflection properties between two angles without any active control system. Our RIS alters its beam pattern from a singular specular reflection to another unique singular anomalous reflection when the incoming waveform changes from a short pulse to a continuous wave, even at the same frequency. Unlike conventional RISs, our passive control mechanism eliminates the requirements of active components and precise symbol-level synchronization with the transmitting antennas, reducing the system complexity level while offering dynamic material adaptability. We numerically show that the proposed RIS design is capable of varying the received magnitude of an incident wave by a factor of ten, which is also experimentally validated for the first time. Employing binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) modulation, we further report that the communication characteristics can be varied by 7 dB or more, which indicates that the proposed design is not limited to a single frequency component as long as the bandwidth of the given signal is covered by that of the RIS design. These results may present new opportunities for exploring and deploying pulse width-dependent RISs in practical scenarios involving next-generation communication systems.

cond-mat.other

Power- and time-dependent equivalent circuit models for waveform-selective metasurfaces with varying electromagnetic responses to repeated pulses at the same frequency

Waveform-selective metasurfaces offer unprecedented control over electromagnetic waves on the basis of pulse width. However, existing circuit models fail to capture the power-dependent behaviors of these metasurfaces, thereby limiting their use in practical applications. Here, for the first time, we present analytical equivalent circuit models that accurately predict both power- and time-dependent responses by incorporating voltage-dependent diode resistance through the Maclaurin series and Wright omega functions. As a result, the variations in the input power and time domain are effectively predicted theoretically. Moreover, our concept is successfully extended to different types of waveform-selective metasurfaces and increasingly complex scenarios, including repeated pulses and nonresonant frequencies. Thus, our equivalent circuit approach can readily explain and quantify the electromagnetic behaviors of waveform-selective metasurfaces. This strategy provides a high degree of control for addressing complex electromagnetic problems by leveraging pulse width as a tuning parameter, even at a fixed frequency.

cond-mat.other

Experimental validation of the diverse incident angle performance of a pulse-width-dependent antenna based on a waveform-selective metasurface in a reverberation chamber

We present experimental validation results of a pulse-width-dependent antenna based on a waveform-selective metasurface that behaves differently according to the incoming waveform, more specifically, the incoming pulse width, even at a fixed frequency. This waveform-selective behavior is integrated with an antenna design to preferentially accept a predetermined incoming waveform while rejecting another waveform at the same frequency. In particular, we report how the waveform-selective antenna performance can be evaluated for diverse incident angles, which is enabled by a measurement method based on a reverberation chamber. This method facilitates variation of the electromagnetic fields and modes inside the chamber and mimicking of complicated wireless communication environments through rotation of the internal stirrer. The experimental results verify that our antenna design concept based on waveform-selective metasurfaces can filter different signals with a wide range of incident angles, opening the door to utilizing such pulse-width-dependent antennas to suppress electromagnetic noise in more realistic wireless communication environments.

physics.app-ph

Multipath Signal-Selective Metasurface: Passive Time-Varying Interlocking Mechanism to Vary Spatial Impedance for Signals with the Same Frequency

Electromagnetic (EM) multipath interference is difficult to address with passive approaches due to two physical restrictions - the shared frequency of the initial and interfering signals and their variable incident angles. Thus, to address multipath interference, the spatial impedance must be adjusted in response to the incident angles of multiple signals with the same frequency, which is impossible with classic linear time-invariant (LTI) systems. We present a design concept for metasurface-based spatial filters to overcome LTI behavior and suppress multipath interference signals using a time-varying interlocking mechanism without any active biasing systems. The proposed devices are coupled to the first incoming wave to adjust the spatial impedance and suppress delayed waves in the time domain, which is validated numerically and experimentally. This study opens a new avenue for passive yet time-varying selective EM metasystems, enabling the adjustment of spatially complicated EM waves and fields even at the same frequency.

physics.app-ph

Passive Time-Varying Waveform-Selective Metasurfaces for Attainment of Magnetic Property Control

We present circuit-loaded metasurfaces that behave differently in a passive manner even at the same frequency in accordance with the incoming waveform, specifically, its pulse width. Importantly, the time-varying waveform-selective metasurfaces reported thus far were mostly able to change their electric properties but not their magnetic properties; this severely limited the design range of their corresponding wave impedances and refractive indices and thus hindered the development of potential applications in antennas, sensors, imagers, signal processing, and wireless communications. In this study, passive time-varying waveform-selective metasurfaces were found to attain magnetic property control by introducing an additional circuit-loaded layer that generated an artificial magnetic dipole moment; this magnetic moment only occurred during the designed pulse duration in the time domain. Our proposed concept and structures were validated numerically and experimentally; thus, our results could be used to address electromagnetic and related issues sharing the same frequency component via the variation of the pulse width as an additional degree of freedom.

physics.app-ph

Metasurface-Enabled Multifunctional Single-Frequency Sensors without External Power

IoT sensors are crucial for visualizing multidimensional and multimodal information and enabling future IT applications/services such as cyber-physical space, digital twins, autonomous driving, smart cities, and virtual/augmented reality (VR or AR). However, IoT sensors need to be battery-free to realistically manage and maintain the growing number of available sensing devices. Here, we provide a novel sensor design approach that employs metasurfaces to enable multifunctional sensing without requiring an external power source. Importantly, unlike existing metasurface-based sensors, our metasurfaces can sense multiple physical parameters even at a fixed frequency by breaking classic harmonic oscillations in the time domain, making the proposed sensors viable for usage with limited frequency resources. Moreover, we provide a method for predicting physical parameters using the machine learning-based approach of random forest regression. The sensing performance was confirmed by estimating temperature and light intensity, and excellent determination coefficients larger than 0.96 were achieved. Our study affords new opportunities for sensing multiple physical properties without relying on an external power source or needing multiple frequencies, which markedly simplifies and facilitates the design of next-generation wireless communication systems.

eess.SP

Inkjet printed intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) for indoor applications

A passive, low-cost, paper-based intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is designed to reflect a signal in a desired direction to overcome non-line-of-sight scenarios in indoor environments. The IRS is fabricated using conductive silver ink printed on a paper with a specific nanoparticle arrangement, yielding a cost effective paper-based IRS that can easily be mass-produced. Full-wave numerical simulation results were consistent with measurements results, demonstrating the IRS's ability to reflect incident wave into a desired nonspecular direction based on the inkjet-printed design and materials.

eess.SP

Frequency-Hopping Wave Engineering with Metasurfaces

Wave phenomena can be artificially engineered by scattering from metasurfaces, which aids in the design of radio-frequency and optical devices for wireless communication, sensing, imaging, wireless power transfer and bio/medical applications. Scattering responses vary with changing frequency; conversely, they remain unchanged at a constant frequency, which has been a long-standing limitation in the design of devices leveraging wave scattering phenomena. Here, we present metasurfaces that can scatter incident waves according to two variables - the frequency and pulse width - in multiple bands. Significantly, these scattering profiles are characterized by how the frequencies are used in different time windows due to transient circuits. In particular, with coupled transient circuits, we demonstrate variable scattering profiles in response to unique frequency sequences, which can markedly increase the available frequency channels in accordance with a factorial function. Our proposed concept, which is analogous to frequency hopping in wireless communication, advances wave engineering in electromagnetics and related fields.

physics.app-ph

Design guidelines for the SPICE parameters of waveform-selective metasurfaces varying with the incident pulse width at a constant oscillation frequency

In this study, we numerically demonstrate how the response of recently reported circuit-based metasurfaces is characterized by their circuit parameters. These metasurfaces, which include a set of four diodes as a full wave rectifier, are capable of sensing different waves even at the same frequency in response to the incident waveform, or more specifically the pulse width. This study reveals the relationship between the electromagnetic response of such waveform-selective metasurfaces and the SPICE parameters of the diodes used. First, we show that reducing a parasitic capacitive component of the diodes is important for realization of waveform-selective metasurfaces in a higher frequency regime. Second, we report that the operating power level is closely related to the saturation current and the breakdown voltage of the diodes. Moreover, the operating power range is found to be broadened by introducing an additional resistor into the inside of the diode bridge. Our study is expected to provide design guidelines for circuit-based waveform-selective metasurfaces to select/fabricate optimal diodes and enhance the waveform-selective performance at the target frequency and power level.

physics.app-ph

Unsynchronized Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces with Pulse-Width-Based Design

In this correspondence, we present a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) that reflects an incident signal to the desired direction, depending on the pulse width. This unique reconfigurability emerges by virtue of the transient response of the embedded nonlinear circuits within the RIS unit cells. The RIS does not need any control lines connected to the unit cells or precise synchronization with the base station, leading to reduced complexity of the RIS system yet allowing automated beamforming characteristics in accordance with the incident pulse width. To verify this scheme, an RIS system model using binary phase shift keying is considered, in which the RIS wireless link is connected to a single transmitter at the input and two receivers at the output. Numerical demonstrations show that modulated signals are received with contrasting bit-error rates in the two receivers, consistent with the aforementioned pulse-width-based beam control.

physics.app-ph

Metasurface-Inspired Maintenance-Free IoT Tags Characterised in Both Frequency and Time Domains

We present metasurface-inspired maintenance-free IoT tags that can be characterised not only by frequency-domain profiles but also by time-domain profiles. In particular, time-domain characterisation is made possible by implementing the waveform-selective mechanisms of recently developed circuit-based metasurfaces that behave differently, even at the same frequency, in accordance with the pulse duration of the incident wave. Our designs are numerically and experimentally validated and potentially contribute to accommodating an increasing number of IoT tags within a single wireless network while reducing maintenance effort.

physics.app-ph

Method for Extracting the Equivalent Admittance from Time-Varying Metasurfaces and Its Application to Self-Tuned Spatiotemporal Wave Manipulation

With their self-tuned time-varying responses, waveform-selective metasurfaces embedded with nonlinear electronics have shown fascinating applications, including distinguishing different electromagnetic waves depending on the pulse width. However, thus far they have only been realized with a spatially homogeneous scattering profile. Here, by modeling a metasurface as time-varying admittance sheets, we provide an analytical calculation method to predict the metasurface time-domain responses. This allows derivation of design specifications in the form of equivalent sheet admittance, which is useful in synthesizing a metasurface with spatiotemporal control, such as to realize a metasurface with prescribed time-dependent diffraction characteristics. As an example, based on the proposed equivalent admittance sheet modeling, we synthesize a waveform-selective Fresnel zone plate with variable focal length depending on the incoming pulse width. The proposed synthesis method of pulse-width-dependent metasurfaces may be extended to designing metasurfaces with more complex spatiotemporal wave manipulation, benefiting applications such as sensing, wireless communications and signal processing.

physics.app-ph

Pulse-Driven Self-Reconfigurable Meta-Antennas

Wireless communications and sensing have notably advanced thanks to the recent developments in both software and hardware. Although various modulation schemes have been proposed to efficiently use the limited frequency resources by exploiting several degrees of freedom, antenna performance is essentially governed by frequency only. Here, we present a new antenna design concept based on metasurfaces to manipulate antenna performances in response to the time width of electromagnetic pulses. We numerically and experimentally show that by using a proper set of spatially arranged metasurfaces loaded with lumped circuits, ordinary omnidirectional antennas can be reconfigured by the incident pulse width to exhibit directional characteristics varying over hundreds of milliseconds or billions of cycles, far beyond conventional performance. We demonstrate that the proposed concept can be applied for sensing, selective reception under simultaneous incidence and mutual communications as the first step to expand existing frequency resources based on pulse width.

physics.app-ph

Smart Radio Environments

This Roadmap takes the reader on a journey through the research in electromagnetic wave propagation control via reconfigurable intelligent surfaces. Meta-surface modelling and design methods are reviewed along with physical realisation techniques. Several wireless applications are discussed, including beam-forming, focusing, imaging, localisation, and sensing, some rooted in novel architectures for future mobile communications networks towards 6G.

physics.class-ph

Pseudo-Waveform-Selective Metasurfaces and Their Limited Performance

In recent years, metasurfaces composed of lumped circuit components, including nonlinear Schottky diodes, have been reported to be capable of sensing particular electromagnetic waves even at the same frequency depending on their waveforms, or more specifically, their pulse widths. In this study, we report analogous waveform-selective phenomena using only linear circuits and linear media. Although such linear metasurfaces are analytically and numerically demonstrated to exhibit variable absorption performance, it cannot strictly be categorized as waveform-selective absorption. It is due to the fact that the waveform-selective responses in the linear metasurfaces are originated from the dispersion behaviors of the structures rather than the frequency-conversion seen in nonlinear waveform-selective metasurfaces. We thus refer to these linear structures as pseudo-waveform-selective metasurfaces. Additionally, we show that the pseudo-waveform-selective metasurfaces have limited performance unless nonlinearity is introduced. These results and findings confirm the advantages of nonlinear waveform-selective metasurfaces, which can be exploited to provide an additional degree of freedom to address existing electromagnetic problems/challenges involving even waves at the same frequency.

physics.app-ph

Metasurfaces for Efficient Digital Noise Absorption

We numerically demonstrate two types of metasurface absorbers to efficiently absorb digital signals. First, we show that the digital waveforms used in this study contain not only a fundamental wave but also nonnegligible harmonic waves, which limits the absorption performance of a conventional metasurface absorber operating in only a single, finite frequency band. The first type of the proposed absorbers is designed using two kinds of unit cells, each of which absorbs either a fundamental frequency or third harmonic of an incident digital waveform. This dual-band metasurface absorber exhibits absorption performance exceeding that of the conventional metasurface absorber and more strongly dissipates the energy of a digital waveform. In addition, the second type of absorber exploits the concept of nonlinear analogous circuits to convert an incoming wave to a different waveform, specifically, a triangular waveform that has a larger magnitude at a fundamental frequency. Therefore, the incoming waveform is more effectively absorbed by this waveform-conversion metasurface absorber as well. Although still there remain some issues to put these digital signal absorbers into practice, including experimental validation, our results contribute to mitigating electromagnetic interference issues caused by digital noise and realising physically smaller, lighter digital signal processing products for the next generation.

physics.app-ph