SOFTWARE DEFINED MATERIALS FOR DYNAMIC CONTROL OF ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES (ANIMATE)

受变换光学（TO）和超材料领域最新科学突破的启发，QMUL与其合作伙伴和英国工业界合作，展示了几种新颖的天线解决方案，这些解决方案可能提供新的复合平面透镜天线、表面波和超表面设备，这些设备可以嵌入到车辆的皮肤中，而不会影响空气动力学性能。代表着与物联网（IoT）、立方体卫星和空间通信相关的未来技术的重大飞跃。底层设计方法的潜力在上面提到的所有技术挑战中都具有更广泛的适用性。例如，我们扩展了TO技术来设计新颖的波束可控天线。而不是移动或倾斜馈电/反射器，我们采用另一种方法来操纵反射发射通过改变介电常数衍生自to。该方法具有保持平面轮廓、波束导向和频率敏捷性等优点。结合适当的馈电设计，该系统可以有效地用作单个散热器或实现大规模MIMO功能的阵列。从广义上讲，具有空间变化介电常数和/或磁导率的介电基片可视为一个“神奇的黑盒子”，其性能可根据所需的功能要求进行编程。在拟议的ANIMATE项目中，我们将这个神奇的黑盒子称为“软件定义材料”，因为它们展示了远远超出传统天线的深远能力，并且可以说是在所有利用电磁频谱的设备和系统中。为了实现这一转变，必须研究和开发一套新颖的先进材料，特别是具有低损耗、高可调性和低直流功耗的活性材料和结构。此外，需要一个强大的偏置网络，以便材料构建块可以单独控制。尽管多年来进行了长期的探索和深入的研究，但这一主题领域仍未得到充分的探索。随着建模和制造工具的不断进步，现在有可能重新审视传统材料和天线设计的一些基本限制。因此，ANIMATE的愿景是释放来自多个学科的贡献和专业知识，开发软件定义材料研究的核心计划，这将使电磁波的动态控制应用于传感，通信和计算。ANIMATE的最终目标是消除天线与射频/微波电子设计以及材料和器件之间的传统界限，从而开发出可编程且灵活的通用材料平台，用于集成通信，传感和计算的多功能应用。具体来说，在这个项目中，我们将：1。通过构建新颖的集成和自适应天线技术，为通信、传感和计算建立软件定义材料的整体方法。将无线传感器网络集成到可调谐材料的计算机接口和控制单元的设计中，以在亚波长尺度上演示和验证“网络材料”的全新概念。与我们的核心工业合作伙伴在开发的各个阶段：原型设计、制造、工具箱验证、平台集成和测试，开发拟议天线和材料技术的具有挑战性的应用。4. 研究新颖的活性和可调谐材料，研究相关材料的基本限制，以应对工业挑战。开发具有复杂复杂性的材料、设备和工艺建模的仿真工具，从而显著开拓设计领域，并使生产具有改进性能的最佳结构成为可能。

Inspired by recent scientific breakthroughs in the area of transformation optics (TO) and metamaterials, QMUL in collaboration with its partners and UK industries have demonstrated several novel antenna solutions which potentially offer new composite flat lens antenna, surface wave and metasurface devices that could be embedded into the skin of vehicles without compromising aerodynamic performance, representing a major leap forward for future technologies related to the Internet of Things (IoT), CubeSat and Space Communications. The potential of the underlying design approaches have much wider applicability in arguably all technical challenges as addressed above. For example, we extended the TO technique to design novel beam steerable antennas . Instead of moving or tilting the feed/reflctor, we employ an alternative way to manipulate the reflected emission by varying the permittivity of dielectrics derived from TO. This method has the merits of maintaining a flat profile, being capable of beam-steering and frequeny agility. Combining with appropriate feed designs, the system can be effectively be used as either a single radiator or an array fulfilling massive MIMO functions. In a broad sense, dielectric substrates with spatially varying permittivity and/or permeability can be regarded as a "magic black box", whose properties are programmable according to required functional requirements. In the proposed ANIMATE project, we refer to this magic black box as "software defined materials", since they demonstrate far-reaching capabilities well beyond conventional antennas and arguably in all devices and systems that exploit electromagnetic spectra. To enable this step change, a suite of novel advanced materials must be studied and developed, especially, active materials and structures with low loss, high tunability but low DC power dissipation are desirable. In addition, a robust biasing network is needed so that material building blocks can be individually controlled. In spite of the longstanding quest and intensive research over the years, this subject area still remains insufficiently explored. With ongoing advances in modelling and manufacturing tools, it is now possible to revisit some fundamental limits imposed on conventional materials and antenna designs. The vision of ANIMATE is therefore to unlock contributions and expertise from multiple disciplines, to develop a core programme of research on software defined materials, which will enable dynamic control of electromagnetic waves for applications in sensing, communications and computation.The ultimate objective of ANIMATE is to remove the traditional boundary between the designs of antennas and RF/microwave electronics as well as materials and devices, so that a generic material platform can be developed that is programmable and flexible for multifunctional applications integrating communication, sensing and computation. Specifically, in this project, we will:1. Establish a holistic approach of software-defined materials for communication, sensing and computation, by building novel integrated and adaptive antenna technologies.2. Integrate wireless sensor networks into the design of computer interface and control units for tunable materials to demonstrate and validate the wholly new concept of "networked materials" at subwavelength scales.3. Exploit challenging applications of proposed antenna and material technologies with our core industrial partners at all stages of development: prototyping, manufacturing, toolbox validation, platform integration and testing. 4. Research novel active and tunable materials and investigate fundamental limits of relevant materials to industrial challenges.5. Develop simulation tools that span from materials, device and process modeling with intricate complexities that open up the design domain significantly and enable the production of optimal structures with improved performance.