Meta-antennas are mechanically reconfigurable antennas that are engineered to take on specific configurations. The key idea is to integrate the antenna into a mechanical metamaterial that can reconfigure the antenna properties by deforming the antenna geometry.
news.mit.edu/2025/shape-chan…
Meta-antenna: Mechanically Frequency Reconfigurable Metamaterial Antennas
A design & fabrication pipeline for creating frequency-reconfigurable antennas using a single type of mechanical metamaterial structure that can transition between three distinct geometric & frequency states.
Through our applications, we demonstrated how Meta-antennas can be integrated into various dynamic objects & across different scales. These applications range from responsive furniture for smart living to adaptive personal electronic devices & interactive tangible user interfaces. Our Ansys-based design tool allows users to design & simulate Meta-antenna structures, while our interaction code template enables user interaction through frequency-shift sensing. Our work demonstrates the potential of combining metamaterials & antennas in a hybrid functional way, paving the way for more means to weave antennas into the fabric of our daily lives.
hcie.csail.mit.edu/research/…
Meta-antenna design suite editor for Ansys HFSS (High Frequency Simulation Software) through the Ansys App Builder & ACT Toolkit.
ANSYS ACT App Builder (Beta)
PDF DOWNLOAD
storage.ansys.com/act/v190/A…
Ansys Customization Toolkit (ACT)
A powerful extension framework designed to extend & customize the Ansys simulation environment to meet your needs. It allows you to modify existing functionality & expose brand new features, automate repetitive tasks, & integrate third-party tools directly into Ansys products. With ACT, you can build custom user interfaces, define new simulation objects, & embed scripts or plugins that streamline workflows and improve productivity.
It supports scripting in Python and XML, making it accessible to both experienced developers and simulation engineers with basic programming knowledge.
developer.ansys.com/docs/act
Antenna Simulation Technologies in High Frequency Simulation Software (HFSS)
HFSS offers the full suite of simulation tools and technologies for antenna design and placement simulation.
ansys.com/applications/anten…
MetaSense: Integrating Sensing Capabilities into Mechanical Metamaterial
An approach to integrate sensing capabilities into 3D printable metamaterial structures by converting selected metamaterial shear cells into conductive cells. By sensing the change in capacitance when opposing cell walls are deformed, we were able to determine user interaction w/ the metamaterial structure.
hcie.csail.mit.edu/research/…
Mechatronic Reconfigurable Intelligent-Surface-Driven Indoor Fifth-Generation Wireless Communication
Our mechatronic device strengthens the innovative reflective beam control functions through rotatable unit structures & rack gear systems. Furthermore, the criteria required for future 5 G wireless communication are experimentally verified by transmitting & receiving quadrature phase-shift keying 16-/32-/64-quadrature amplitude modulation signals based on 5 G new radio (NR) frequency range two standards for indoor environments.
advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley…
Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces for 6G & Beyond: A Comprehensive Survey from Theory to Deployment
As the wireless research community moves toward shaping the vision of sixth-generation (6G) networks, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) have emerged as a promising technology for controlling the propagation environment.
There are three different types of hardware architecture of RIS: passive, active, & hybrid.
Hybrid RIS or semi-passive RIS, a combination of both types, has a small number of active elements among mostly passive ones. It empowers metasurfaces to reflect incoming signals in a precisely controllable manner while concurrently sensing a fraction of the signal.
arxiv.org/html/2506.19526v1