Practical design and implementation of metamaterial-enhanced magnetic induction communication

The wireless communications in complex environments, such as underground and underwater, can enable various applications in the environmental, industrial, homeland security, law enforcement, and military fields. However, conventional electromagnetic wave-based techniques do not work due to the lossy media and complicated structures. Magnetic induction (MI) has been proved to achieve reliable communication in such environments. However, due to the small antenna size, the communication range of MI is still very limited, especially for the portable mobile devices. To this end, Metamaterial-enhanced MI (M²I) communication has been proposed, where the theoretical results predict that it can significantly increase the data rate and range. Nevertheless, there exists a significant gap between the theoretical prediction and the practical realization of M²I; the theoretical model relies on an ideal spherical metamaterial, while it does not exist in nature. In this paper, a practical design is proposed by leveraging a spherical coil array to realize M²I communication. The full-wave simulation is conducted to validate the design objectives. By using the spherical coil array-based M²I communication, the communication range can be significantly extended, exactly as we predicted in the ideal M²I model. Finally, the proposed M²I communication is implemented and tested in various environments.