Nano meta components for electronic smart wireless systems

New communications and radar systems require small and tunable high-frequency devices, since their backbone is the Internet-of-Things (IoT).

The need for ultrafast, low-energy-consumption information processing of an exponentially increasing data volume willlead to a global mobile traffic reaching 4394 EB by 2030, thus starting the 6G era (data rate up to 1 Tb/s) of an “ubiquitous virtualexistence”. In today’s wireless applications, radar sensors play one of the major roles.

Due to the increased need for higher sensitivityand non-destructive inspection systems, the frequency of the radar sensors has reached up to 300GHz on silicon-based technologies.On the other side, 60GHz radar sensing is considered one of the main products for smart home, non-destructive materialclassification, monitoring vital signals, and all the IoT application that need micro-motion detection.

The market penetration for thesesensors is now hampered by (i) the limited antenna performance (mainly for the 300GHz case) and (ii) the frequency selectivity andtunability (mainly for the 60GHz case).

SMARTWAY proposes novel architectures based on new paradigms that exhibit a significantdecrease in energy consumption while improving on speed/performance and miniaturization.

The disruptive nature of the targetedapproach relies on a progress towards the wafer-scale integration of two-dimensional (2D) materials, metamaterials (MMs), andcarbon nanotubes (CNTs) into radar sensor suitable for IoT sensing applications at both millimetre-waves (i.e., 24–60GHz) and THzfrequencies (i.e., 240–300GHz).

The final outcomes of the project will be two demonstrators, apt to provide industry compatiblesolutions for radar sensor technologies.

For the first time, the nanotechnological paradigms “2D materials” and “CNTs” will beharmonized with the MM concept, thus producing brand-new designs of large-scale complete systems with emphasis oncompatibility and integration of different materials/technologies.