Metasurfaces consisting of electrically thin and densely packed planar arrays of subwavelength elements enable an unprecedented control of the impinging electromagnetic fields. Spatially modulated metasurfaces can efficiently tailor the spatial distribution of these fields with great flexibility. Similarly, time modulated metasurfaces can be successfully used to manipulate the frequency content and time variations of the impinging field. In this paper, we present time-modulated reflective metasurfaces that cause a frequency shift to the impinging radiation, thus realizing an artificial Doppler effect in a non-moving electrically thin structure. Starting from the theoretical analysis, we analytically derive the required time modulation of the surface admittance to achieve this effect, and present a realistic time-varying structure, based on a properly designed and dynamically tuned high-impedance surface. It is analytically and numerically demonstrated that the field emerging from the metasurface is up-/down-converted in frequency according to the modulation profile of the metasurface. The proposed metasurface concept, enabling a frequency modulation of the electromagnetic field “on-the-fly„, may find application in telecommunication, radar, and sensing scenarios.

In this article, we provide a comprehensive review of past and present efforts in the field of microwave nonreciprocity with an emphasis on the most commonly used nonreciprocal devices, namely gyrators, isolators, and circulators. After discussing the origin and history of such efforts, we elaborate on the pros and cons of four distinct approaches to break reciprocity which include magnetic biasing of ferrite materials, intrinsic nonreciprocity of solid-state devices, nonlinearities with geometric asymmetries, and finally, periodic spatiotemporal variation. We subsequently pay due attention to the spatiotemporal approach and show that the recently emerging proposals to achieve magnet-free nonreciprocity with linear, periodically time-varying circuits can compete with traditional ferrite devices and even outperform them in several metrics, thus opening the door to exciting venues for miniaturized low-cost and high-performance nonreciprocal devices with numerous applications ranging from full-duplex communications and quantum computing to biomedical imaging and radar systems.

The time–bandwidth limit inherently relates the lifetime of a resonance and its spectral bandwidth, with direct implications for the maximum storage time of a pulse versus its frequency content. Recently, it has been argued that nonreciprocal cavities may overcome this constraint by breaking the strict equality of their incoupling and outcoupling coefficients. Here, we study the implications of nonreciprocity on resonant linear, time-invariant cavities and derive general relations, stemming from microscopic reversibility, that govern their dynamics. We show that nonreciprocal cavities do not provide specific advantages in terms of the time–bandwidth limit, but enable other attractive properties for nanophotonic systems.

In this paper, we present voltage-mode and current-mode differential magnetless nonreciprocal devices obtained by pairing two single-ended (SE) circulators, each consisting of three first-order bandpass or bandstop LC filters, connected in either a wye or a delta topology. The resonant poles of each SE circulator are modulated in time with 120° phase-shifted periodic signals, resulting in synthetic angular-momentum biasing achieved through spatiotemporal modulation (STM). We tailor the two SE circulators to exhibit a constant 180° phase difference between their STM biases. Unlike conventional differential time-variant circuits, for which only the even or odd spurs are rejected, we show that the proposed configuration cancels out all intermodulation products, thus making them operate alike linear time-invariant (LTI) circuits for an external observer. In turn, this property enhances all metrics of the resulting circulator, overcoming the limitations of SE architectures, and improving insertion loss, impedance matching, bandwidth, and noise figure. We show that this differential architecture also significantly relaxes the required modulation parameters, both in frequency and amplitude. We develop a rigorous small-signal model to guide the design of the proposed circuits and to get insights into their pseudo-LTI characteristics. Then, we validate the theory with simulations and measurements showing remarkable performance compared to the current state-of-the-art of magnetless nonreciprocal devices.

Conventionally, antennas are reciprocal devices, exhibiting the same properties in transmission and in reception. In order to break antenna reciprocity, in this letter, we exploit the properties of space-time varying metamaterials, whose dielectric properties are modulated in both space and time. We propose to surround the antenna by a space-time varying cloak that imparts a momentum bias to the electromagnetic field propagating through it. The propagating wave interacts with the space-time modulation only in one direction, breaking time-reversal symmetry and, thus, the reciprocity of the system. Here, we show that a properly designed space-time varying metamaterial cloak can be used to significantly change the realized gain exhibited by an antenna in its transmission and reception mode. Since the proposed concept is based on weak coupling between propagating modes, electrically long propagation distance in the cloak is required, increasing the overall dimension of the system. However, the cloak thickness can be controlled by modifying the modulation parameters. The proposed concept may enhance the performance of radio-frequency communication systems, reducing the in-band captured noise or interfering signals.