Real-Time Electromagnetic Wave Engineering for Next Generation Wireless Systems

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Extrapolating from current market trends, it is predicted that 5G networks will be required to support a 1,000-fold increase in data capacity to handle over 100 billion devices featuring peak rates of 10 Gb/s and low data transmission latency. Considering the eventual saturation of the technological limits of the semiconductor industry, and the fact that a mere evolution of current mobile technologies will be largely insufficient to meet the anticipated demands, transition to mm-waves is among the most promising solutions considered currently within the wireless industry. While transition to mm-wave features simplified system architectures, it requires major technological progress in terms of hardware constraints. As of today, mm-wave systems resort to hybrid architectures dominantly based on digital techniques, where a significant part of the signal processing is performed at baseband, implying high system complexity and cost. While the conventional wisdom points towards improving baseband and radio-frequency (RF) architectures, with the aim of realizing computationally efficient interfaces and higher density integrated designs, this proposal undertakes a fundamentally different and a potentially disruptive signal processing approach, which does not rely on digital techniques and hence without suffering from their technological bottlenecks. This signal processing paradigm is referred to as Real-Time Analog Wave Engineering (RT-AWE).RT-AWE is the manipulation of electromagnetic (EM) signals in their pristine analog form and in real time to realize specific operations enabling microwave or mm-wave applications, inspired from ultrafast optical signal processing principles. The heart of an RT-AWE system is a dispersion engineered EM structure, which interacts with complex EM waveforms, either temporally, spatially or spatio-temporally, producing instantaneous wave-shaped responses of desired characteristics. In this research program, the applicant plans to develop new mm-wave analog and/or hybrid RT-AWE technological solutions based on his recent works on dispersion engineered phasers, leaky-wave antennas, metasurfaces and metamaterials. Some key application goals are multi-Gbps mm-wave links for microwave backhaul and data interconnect applications, ultrafast high resolution spectrum analyzers, smart antenna front-ends, and metasurface based engineered EM environments. With scientific innovation in EM metamaterials and engineering focus on future wireless mm-wave systems, RT-AWE has the potential for breakthrough low-cost wireless technologies, making them affordable and available to millions of Canadians in both dense urban areas and remote geographical locations. In case of success, RT-AWE may continue the rich and bold tradition of Canadian scientific innovation and place the country among the forefront of the next wireless revolution.