China’s award-winning 6G tech turns every wall and pipe into a sensor
Chinese innovation boosts wireless data rates, reduces dead zones and can track people and objects, even underground
The innovation earned a gold award at the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva in March, the online results of which were announced on June 14.
The innovation is named Distributed Integrated Sensing and Communication Metasurface (DISACM). It uses intelligent reconfigurable surfaces to reshape wireless propagation environments, enabling simultaneous communication enhancement, environmental perception and computational coordination.
In smart-city scenarios, the researchers cascaded 10 DISACM modules – a type of electromagnetic covering – on a building facade, immediately boosting the reference signal received power (RSRP) in dead zones by 10 to 20 decibels (dB), while supporting wireless data rates of up to 400 megabits per second.
At the same time, the modules performed environmental sensing and people-flow counting.
The technology, designed for 6G and future networks, comes from a team at Southeast University in Nanjing led by Professor Cheng Qiang and academician Cui Tiejun, a pioneer in the field of information metamaterials.