Smart Propagation Environments Empowered by Metasurfaces: A Self-Consistent Study

Smart environments are expected to constitute a distributed wireless network that will support the physical and digital layers in a sustainable manner. Metasurfaces can be used to control radio waves in a way that is compliant with the current operation of wireless communications. In order to control wave propagation, we need a mathematical framework that captures the metasurface operation in the presence of the surrounding propagation environment. The scattering properties of such a complex propagation scenario need to be found self-consistently, i.e., requires a general method that captures multiple interactions between metasurface and environment. This translates into solving a Burton-Miller formulation for the associated boundary-value wave problem. Our methodology overcomes the non-uniqueness difficulties generated by inconsistent theories where the propagation problem and metasurface scattering are solved in isolation and then coupled afterward. Importantly, the use of the fast multipole method is adopted to improve the overall computational efficiency.