Holographic Communication via Recordable and Reconfigurable Metasurface

Abstract: Holographic surface based communication technologies are anticipated to play a significant role in the next generation of wireless networks. The existing reconfigurable holographic surface (RHS)-based scheme only utilizes the reconstruction process of the holographic principle for beamforming, where the channel sate information (CSI) is needed. However, channel estimation for CSI acquirement is a challenging task in metasurface based communications. In this study, inspired by both the recording and reconstruction processes of holography, we develop a novel holographic communication scheme by introducing recordable and reconfigurable metasurfaces (RRMs), where channel estimation is not needed thanks to the recording process. Then we analyze the input-output mutual information of the RRM-based communication system and compare it with the existing RHS based system. Our results show that, without channel estimation, the proposed scheme achieves performance comparable to that of the RHS scheme with perfect CSI, suggesting a promising alternative for future wireless communication networks.