Decoupling Strategy of Metasurface to Realize Independent Sensing and Wave Manipulations at the Same Time

Abstract In recent years, integrating electromagnetic (EM) sensing and wave manipulation has become crucial for future wireless developments, significantly enhancing the application performance by acquiring complex environmental information and optimizing the distribution of EM resources. Metasurface offers unprecedented control over sensing and wave manipulation, yet a conflict arises in achieving both simultaneously. To solve the problem, a decoupling strategy is proposed to simultaneously realize sensing and wave manipulation using a space‐time‐coding digital metasurface (STCDM) without integrating any sensors. A space‐time‐coding matrix is constructed by allocating the reflectivity of all meta‐ atoms across the space‐time dimensions, enabling arbitrary manipulation of EM waves while simultaneously acquiring the sensing information at the incident frequency from metasurface. Excellent accuracy of direction‐of‐arrival estimation and wave manipulation confirms the decoupling method. An adaptive STCDM system is built up to validate the strategy in wireless communications. The measured results show that the adaptive STCDM enables independent sensing and wireless communications at the same time for targets located at different positions without integrating any sensors. The proposed method may find potential applications in wireless communication, radar, and Internet of Things systems.