Joint time-frequency analysis on space-time-coding digital metasurfaces

Space-time and time-varying metastructures have attracted a lot of research interest in recent years. On the other hand, digital programmable metasurfaces have also gained great attention owing to their powerful capabilities in controlling electromagnetic (EM) fields and waves in real time, which is very suitable for implementing spatiotemporal modulations in a digital manner. Accordingly, space-time-coding (STC) digital metasurfaces have recently been proposed to realize advanced manipulations of EM wavefronts and digital information, allowing simultaneous control of propagation directions in the space domain and harmonic distributions in the frequency domain. However, their instantaneous responses and the connection between the time- and frequency-domain characteristics have not yet been fully revealed. Here, we present a joint time-frequency analysis method to revisit STC digital metasurfaces, in which the time-domain instantaneous scattering patterns and frequency-domain equivalent excitations are investigated to analyze the spatial-spectral distributions of the modulated waves. This joint time-frequency analysis method helps to better explain the basic working principle of STC digital metasurfaces and is expected to facilitate more applications in wireless communications, radar, imaging, and beamforming.