Intelligent Time-Varying Metasurface Transceiver for Index Modulation in 6G Wireless Networks.

Index modulation (IM) is one of the candidate technologies for the upcoming sixth generation (6G) wireless communications networks. In this paper, we propose a space-time-modulated reconfigurable intelligent metasurface (RI-MTS) that is configured to implement various frequency-domain IM techniques in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) array configuration. Unlike prior works which mostly analyze signal-theory of general RI-MTS IM, we present novel electromagnetics-compliant designs of specific IMs such as sub-carrier index modulation (SIM) and MIMO orthogonal FD modulation IM (MIMO-OFDM-IM). Our full-wave electromagnetic simulations and analytical computations establish the programmable ability of these transceivers to vary the reflection phase and generate frequency harmonics for IM. We show that the bit error rates of our RI-MTS-based SIM and MIMO-OFDM-IM are within an order of conventional OFDM.