Multifunctional Systems on Antenna Apertures

无线应用的快速增长对下一代无线设备的性能提出了很高的期望。这些设备需要感测环境条件，例如它们的地理位置、其他无线设备的存在和方向。它们应该适应用户的要求，如移动性，所需的带宽，物理形状（人，汽车或飞机）和安全性。它们还需要决定如何在选择频谱、偏振、输出功率和调制方面相互通信。 传统上，这些特征在更高的物理层实现，这些物理层远离与外部环境直接交互的天线。 这种方法导致具有众多组件的庞大、复杂和昂贵的系统，其不适合现代无线应用所需的高水平的集成和集成。该系统还需要显著的数字信号处理能力并且具有高功耗。这些问题阻止了它们成为广泛的商业产品。 为了解决上述问题，并实现更广泛的性能范围，在这里，我们建议将这些主要特征，即“感测，智能和适应性”从更高的物理层转移到与周围介质直接接触的天线孔径级别。在这项建议中，将研究新的拓扑结构，其中系统成为天线结构的组成部分。这将通过使用“可调谐工程电磁表面”操纵天线孔径来完成，以充分利用传播环境的潜力。这导致天线作为多功能系统，具有更少的组件数量和更低的处理能力。它们还提供无与伦比的集成水平和性能。这种方法不仅可以实现新的应用，还可以以前所未有的方式发展无线和卫星通信系统，传感器网络和医疗系统。

The rapid growing of the wireless applications has set high degree of expectations on the performance of the next generation of wireless devices. These devices need to sense environmental conditions, such as their geographic locations, presence and direction of other wireless devices. They should adapt to users requirements such as mobility, required bandwidth, physical shapes (human, car or plane) and the amount of security. They also need to decide how to communicate among themselves in terms of selecting the spectrum, polarization, output power and modulation. Traditionally, these features are implemented at higher physical layers, which are far away from the antennas which have direct interaction with outside environments. This approach leads to bulky, complex and expensive systems with numerous components, which are not amenable to the high level of miniaturizations and integrations required by modern wireless applications. The systems also require significant digital signal processing capacity and have high power consumptions. These issues prevent them of being widespread commercial products. To address the above mentioned problems and achieve much broader range of performance, here, we propose to transfer these main features i.e. "sensing, intelligence and adaptability" from higher physical layers to the level of antenna apertures which have direct contact with surrounding mediums. In this proposal, new topologies will be investigated in which systems become integral part of antenna structures. This will be done by manipulating the antenna apertures using "tunable engineered Electromagnetics surfaces" to fully utilize the potential of propagation environments. This leads to antennas acting as multifunctional systems with fewer numbers of components, and much less processing power . They also offer unparalleled level of integrations, and performances. This approach enables not only novel applications, but also evolving wireless and satellite communication systems, sensor networks, and medical systems in ways not yet even imagined.