Passive and Modular Surface Design for Tailoring EM Propagation in Urban Scenarios

Modular, passive and static metasurfaces are employed for the realization of a smart electromagnetic skin, a device embedded in the facade of buildings aimed at improving the communication performances through the intelligent reflection of the signal towards otherwise 'blind' areas. The proposed design methodology considers an admissible surface area on the building facade and divides it into tiles (i.e., the minimal sized building blocks of the smart skin). A binary multi-objective genetic algorithm is then paired to the analytical model of the smart skin to optimize its layout (i.e., the tiles position and number), in order to satisfy a desired field threshold inside specific areas under consideration in the urban scenario. The final result is a Modular Reflecting Smart-Skin (MRSS) design methodology capable of providing an entire set of solutions, each one offering a trade-off between the complexity of the MRSS and the coverage of the blind area.