Electronic origami

Electronic origami

Electromagnetic origami is expected to be enabled by the collective response of the unit EM tiles capable of reconfiguring the field pattern along with the origamic surface actuation. Each of these unit tiles can be the size of multiple individual radiating elements and the array response in such a case is ultimately limited by the individual antenna patterns. The ultimate programmable surface is one which can synthesized on the fly at deep sub-wavelength scales. We have been able to demonstrate for the first time a new architecture that allows us to achieve this field programmability as well as frequency re-configurability at the same time. In fact, we have shown that this approach allows us to not only achieve field programmability but it break the trade-offs in classical array based designs. By dissociating a radiating surface into multiple ports for EM field synthesis and sensing, we have shown a single chip-scale programmable architecture capable of operating over 65% fractional bandwidth (35-75 GHz) with the ability to shape the beam on the fly, send multiple information across multiple directions, process multiple information from multiple directions, as well as enable spatial diversity and establish links when the main channel path is blocked. The chips are fabricated in 65 nm CMOS process and achieves close to an universal EM tile which can be tiled together for the universally programmable EM origami surface.