Recent years have seen the emergence of programmable metasurfaces, where the user can modify the electromagnetic (EM) response of the device via software. Adding reconfigurability to the already powerful EM capabilities of metasurfaces opens the door to novel cyber-physical systems with exciting applications in domains such as holography, cloaking, or wireless communications. This paradigm shift, however, comes with a non-trivial increase of the complexity of the metasurfaces that will pose new reliability challenges stemming from the need to integrate tuning, control, and communication resources to implement the programmability. While metasurfaces will become prone to failures, little is known about their tolerance to errors. To bridge this gap, this paper examines the reliability problem in programmable metamaterials by proposing an error model and a general methodology for error analysis. To derive the error model, the causes and potential impact of faults are identified and discussed qualitatively. The methodology is presented and exemplified for beam steering, which constitutes a relevant case for programmable metasurfaces. Results show that performance degradation depends on the type of error and its spatial distribution and that, in beam steering, error rates over 20% can still be considered acceptable.

中文翻译：

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用于光束控制的可编程超表面的误差分析

近年来出现了可编程超表面，用户可以通过软件修改设备的电磁 (EM) 响应。为超表面已经强大的 EM 功能添加可重构性，为在全息、隐形或无线通信等领域具有令人兴奋的应用的新型网络物理系统打开了大门。然而，这种范式转变伴随着超表面复杂性的显着增加，这将带来新的可靠性挑战，因为需要集成调谐、控制和通信资源以实现可编程性。虽然超表面很容易出现故障，但人们对它们的容错性知之甚少。为了弥合这一差距，本文通过提出误差模型和误差分析的通用方法来研究可编程超材料中的可靠性问题。为了推导出错误模型，需要定性地确定和讨论故障的原因和潜在影响。提出并举例说明了光束控制的方法，它构成了可编程超表面的相关案例。结果表明，性能下降取决于错误的类型及其空间分布，并且在波束控制中，超过 20% 的错误率仍然可以被认为是可以接受的。这构成了可编程超表面的相关案例。结果表明，性能下降取决于错误的类型及其空间分布，并且在波束控制中，超过 20% 的错误率仍然可以被认为是可以接受的。这构成了可编程超表面的相关案例。结果表明，性能下降取决于错误的类型及其空间分布，并且在波束控制中，超过 20% 的错误率仍然可以被认为是可以接受的。