Localization in power-constrained Terahertz-operating software-defined metamaterials

摘要

Software-Defined Metamaterials (SDMs) show a strong potential for advancing the engineered controlof electromagnetic waves. As such, they are envisioned to enable a variety of exciting applications,among others in the domains of smart textiles, high-resolution structural monitoring, and sensingin challenging environments. Many of the applications envisage deformations of the SDM structures,such as their bending, stretching or rolling, which implies that the locations of metamaterial elementswill be changing relative to one another. In this paper, we argue that if the metamaterial elementswould be accurately localizable, this location information could potentially be utilized for enablingnovel SDM applications, as well as for optimizing the control of the elements themselves. To enabletheir localization, we assume that these elements are controlled wirelessly through a Terahertz (THz)-operating nanonetwork. We consider the elements to be power-constrained, with their sole poweringoption being to harvest energy from different environmental sources. By means of simulation, wedemonstrate sub-millimeter accuracy of the two-way Time of Flight (ToF)-based localization, as wellas high availability of the service (i.e., consistently more than 80% of the time), which is a result of thelow energy consumed in the localization process. Finally, we qualitatively characterize the latency ofthe proposed localization service, as well as outline several challenges and future research directions.