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frameborder=”0\u2033 allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen><\/p>\nThe invention of radio communications in the 1890s was a discovery that changed the world.<\/p>\n
A signal could be coded into an electromagnetic radio wave, sent forth into the world, and picked up by a receiver, which translates and converts the signal back to an understandable format.<\/p>\n
With current technology, the electromagnetic signal is typically converted into an electrical signal and digitized into numbers, which can then be processed to extract the information it carries.<\/p>\n
Now, a team of researchers led by Southeast University in China has shown that some of those calculations can instead be performed directly on the radio waves as they interact with a programmable surface.<\/p>\n
“In an everyday analogy, it can be viewed as a reprogrammable electromagnetic-space computer to process the signals directly in the electromagnetic wave propagation,” electrical engineers Jun Yan Dai, Qiang Cheng, and Tie Jun Cui, the study’s corresponding authors, told ScienceAlert.<\/p>\n
“The computed results are carried out directly by the outgoing electromagnetic wave, without requiring to firstly convert the entire signal into digital data for processing by a conventional processor.”<\/p>\n
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Radio waves occupy the low-frequency end of the electromagnetic spectrum<\/a> \u2013 basically, light \u2013 and have a set of properties that make them especially useful for transmitting information.<\/p>\n They can travel long distances through the atmosphere, diffract around obstacles, travel through some materials, and many can travel through weather<\/a> that interferes with shorter wavelengths. We use them for all sorts of technology, from Wi-Fi to radar<\/a> to GPS<\/a> to broadcast media.<\/p>\n But transmitting a radio wave is only part of the job. For many applications, we also need to precisely manipulate those waves \u2013 changing properties such as their direction, phase, or amplitude.<\/p>\n One increasingly powerful way to do that is with a metasurface \u2013 a thin, engineered surface covered in tiny structures designed to alter electromagnetic waves in carefully controlled ways.<\/p>\n The metasurface developed by the research team takes that idea a step further. Its properties can be electronically reprogrammed, allowing the researchers to change how an incoming radio wave is manipulated over both space and time.<\/p>\n “This architecture builds on the long-term development of time-coding metasurfaces. In 2018, our group introduced the concept of time-domain digital coding metasurfaces, extending the metasurface control from the static spatial domain into the time domain,” the researchers explained.<\/p>\n “Building on this foundation, we established a direct relationship between time-coding sequences and mathematical operations such as Fourier transforms and convolutions. This allowed the metasurface to move beyond controlling electromagnetic waves and to use electromagnetic waves as a computational medium.”<\/p>\n They chose the two operations mentioned \u2013 Fourier transforms and convolutions \u2013 because they represent two of the most fundamental operations in signal processing.<\/p>\n A Fourier transform<\/a> is an operation that breaks a pattern up into its parts<\/a> \u2013 think of separating a chord into its constituent notes, or a white beam of light into a rainbow. That’s the simplest explanation, but the math involved is more complicated.<\/p>\n Convolutions<\/a>, on the other hand, can be used to find where a known pattern occurs within a signal. For example, in radar, finding where a reflected pulse matches the transmitted one can help determine how far away an object is.<\/p>\n Both operations have practical applications in radar. Fourier transforms can reveal the Doppler shift in a reflected signal \u2013 how much the wavelength is stretched or squished \u2013 to see how fast an object is moving. Convolutions, as mentioned, can determine distance.<\/p>\n But the researchers didn’t build two separate metasurfaces. Instead, they made one that can alternate between the two tasks by switching the time-coding sequence used to program the surface.<\/p>\n “We program the metasurface with a time-coding sequence that represents the required computational kernel. When the radio-frequency signal reaches the metasurface, it is directly modulated by this time-varying response,” the researchers said.<\/p>\n “The resulting wave components then combine coherently, producing the Fourier transform or convolution results in the outgoing electromagnetic wave. In this sense, the essential multiplication-and-summation process is performed physically in one time rather than calculated point by point by a digital processor.”<\/p>\n Basically, the surface is programmed with a changing pattern that corresponds to the desired mathematical operation. The incoming radio wave hits it and is reshaped by the metasurface in a carefully controlled way. Different components of the resulting wave combine to carry out the calculations.<\/p>\n The researchers tested the metasurface in different settings \u2013 inside a clean lab as well as outdoors with realistic multipath and clutter conditions \u2013 and found that it was accurately able to perform both operations in real-time.<\/p>\n For example, they fed the system a simulated radar echo from a target moving at 200 meters (656 feet) per second. It returned a velocity of 201 meters per second with 500 sampling points, and 199.5 meters per second with 1,000 sampling points \u2013 both within the system’s resolution.<\/p>\n They also tested its ability to measure distance with simulated targets from 4 to 28 kilometers (2.5 to 17.5 miles) away. The errors remained within the system’s 300-meter resolution.<\/p>\n And all of this could be done by switching the metasurface from Fourier transform to convolution without modifying the hardware.<\/p>\n That doesn’t mean the conventional hardware is no longer required; as the researchers noted: “Conventional electronics are still used to generate and load the time-coding sequences, drive and synchronize the metasurface, and receive and display the output.”<\/p>\n However, it could result in a simpler radio-frequency-signal processing chain that could reduce reliance on components such as high-speed analog-to-digital converters and digital processors.<\/p>\n The next hurdle will be to increase the modulation speed of the metasurface while maintaining accuracy, stability, and energy efficiency. Faster modulation is needed to process wider-band signals, but it can bring greater signal losses and more complex hardware.<\/p>\n When they get there, the obvious first application will be radar. From there, however, it may be possible to implement the system across a range of radio applications, including 6G communications, satellite systems<\/a>, and automotive radar.<\/p>\n Related: Mystery of Weird Signal Detected in The Australian Desert Finally Solved<\/a><\/p>\n “Ultimately,” Dai, Cheng, and Cui told ScienceAlert, “we envision a single hardware platform that can switch flexibly between different computational tasks simply by changing its time-coding sequence.”<\/p>\n The findings have been published in Nature Communications<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article was fact-checked by Clare Watson<\/a> and edited by Clare Watson<\/a>. While we pride ourselves on our process, we are only human. If you spot a mistake, please let us know<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The invention of radio communications in the 1890s was a discovery that changed the world. A signal could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[49,48,315,314,66],"class_list":["post-853212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-msft-content","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Scientists](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/system.jpg\")
A diagram illustrating how the metasurface switches between Fourier transforms and convolutions. (Chen et al., Nat. Commun., 2026)<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786384219_610_0.jpg\")
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Testing the system in the clean lab. (Chen et al., Nat. Commun., 2026)<\/p>\n![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786384225_420_0.jpg\")
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<\/a><\/p>\n