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

受最近在转换光学（TO）和超材料领域的科学突破的启发，QMUL与其合作伙伴和英国工业界合作，展示了几种新型天线解决方案，这些解决方案可能提供新的复合平板透镜天线，表面波和超表面设备，这些设备可以嵌入到车辆的外壳中，而不会影响空气动力学性能，代表着物联网（IoT），CubeSat和空间通信相关的未来技术的重大飞跃。潜在的设计方法在上述所有技术挑战中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。我们采用另一种方法来操纵反射发射，而不是移动或倾斜的饲料/寄生虫，通过改变从TO导出的寄生虫的介电常数。该方法具有保持平坦剖面、波束控制和频率捷变等优点。结合适当的馈电设计，该系统可以有效地用作单个辐射器或实现大规模MIMO功能的阵列。在广义上，具有空间变化的介电常数和/或磁导率的电介质基板可以被视为“魔术黑盒”，其属性是根据所需的功能要求可编程的。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”，因为它们表现出远远超出传统天线的深远能力，可以说在所有利用电磁频谱的设备和系统中。为了实现这一飞跃，必须研究和开发一系列新型的先进材料，特别是具有低损耗、高可调谐性和低直流功耗的有源材料和结构。此外，需要一个强大的偏置网络，以便可以单独控制材料构建块。尽管多年来一直在进行长期的探索和深入的研究，但这一主题领域仍然没有得到充分的探索。随着建模和制造工具的不断进步，现在可以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，开发软件定义材料的核心研究计划，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和RF/微波电子产品以及材料和设备设计之间的传统界限，从而可以开发通用材料平台，其可编程且灵活，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。2.将无线传感器网络整合到可调材料的计算机接口和控制单元的设计中，以展示和验证亚波长尺度上“网络化材料”的全新概念.与我们的核心工业合作伙伴一起，在开发的所有阶段（原型设计、制造、工具箱验证、平台集成和测试）探索天线和材料技术的挑战性应用。4.研究新型活性和可调材料，并调查相关材料应对工业挑战的基本限制。5.开发涵盖材料、器件和工艺建模的仿真工具，这些工具具有复杂的复杂性，可显著打开设计领域，并能够生产性能更佳的最佳结构。

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.