Meta-IoT: Simultaneous Sensing and Transmission by Meta-Material Sensor-Based Internet of Things

In the coming 6G communications, the internet of things (IoT) will be a fundamental enabler for ubiquitous environment perception, which requires the IoT sensors to consume near-zero power and have the lowest cost. For this purpose, the IoT sensors are expected to perform simultaneous sensing and transmission, so that energy and hardware costs due to signal modulation can be saved. In this paper, we propose the concept of meta-IoT, i.e., the IoT with sensors composed of specially designed meta-materials, which can achieve simultaneous sensing and transmission without supplied power. The basic idea of meta-IoT sensors is that the signal reflection on the sensors is sensitive to environmental conditions, which can be captured by a wireless receiver. In order to optimize the sensing systems with meta-IoT sensors, we establish the mathematical model of meta-IoT sensors’ sensing and transmission and then jointly optimize the sensors’ structure and the environment estimation at the receiver. We design and implement a practical meta-IoT sensing system for monitoring temperature and humidity levels. Simulation results show that the proposed technique can obtain the optimal sensor structure, and the experimental results verify that the designed meta-IoT sensing system achieves low measurement errors.