Enhancing and Localizing Surface Wave Propagation with Reconfigurable Surfaces

As an attempt to develop a reconfigurable surface architecture that can use liquid metal such as Galinstan to shape surface channels on demand, this paper considers a punctured surface where cavities are evenly distributed and can be filled with liquid metal potentially via digitally controlled pumps. In this paper, we look at the benefits of such architecture in terms of surface-wave signal enhancement and isolation, and examine how various system parameters impact the performance using full wave 3-dimensional electromagnetic simulations. It is shown that extraordinary signal shaping can be obtained.
Comment: Submitted to 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation, Taipei, Taiwan,2021