Supporting Information

for Adv. Mater., DOI: 10.1002/adma.202106080

Mass-Manufactured Beam-Steering Metasurfaces for

High-Speed Full-Duplex Optical Wireless-Broadcasting
Communications
Jin Tao, Quan You, Zile Li, Ming Luo, Zichen Liu, Ying
Qiu, Yan Yang, Yongquan Zeng, Zhixue He, Xi Xiao,*
Guoxing Zheng,* and Shaohua Yu*
 Supplementary

Mass-manufactured beam-steering metasurfaces for high-speed full-duplex

optical wireless-broadcasting communications

Jin Tao, Quan You, Zile Li, Ming Luo, Zichen Liu, Ying Qiu, Yan Yang, Yongquan
Zeng, Zhixue He, Xi Xiao,* Guoxing Zheng,* and Shaohua Yu*

Dr. J. Tao, Q. You, M. Luo, Z. C. Liu, Y. Qiu, Dr. Z. X. He, Dr. X. Xiao, Prof. S. H.
Yu
State Key Laboratory of Optical Communication Technologies and Networks, China
Information Communication Technologies Group Corporation (CICT), Wuhan
430074, China
E-mails: xxiao@wri.com.cn; shaohua.yu@cict.com

Dr. J. Tao, Q. You, M. Luo, Z. C. Liu, Y. Qiu, Dr. Z. X. He, Dr. X. Xiao, Prof. S. H.
Yu
National Information Optoelectronics Innovation Center, China Information
Communication Technologies Group Corporation (CICT), Wuhan 430074, China
Dr. J. Tao, Dr. Z. L. Li, Dr. Z. X. He, Dr. X. Xiao, Prof. G. X. Zheng, Prof. S. H. Yu
Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen 518055, China
E-mail: gxzheng@whu.edu.cn

Dr. Z. L. Li, Prof. Y. Q. Zeng, Prof. G. X. Zheng

Electronic Information School, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
Prof. Y. Yang
Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China
1. Experimental setup for illumination of the reflective metasurface.

In this work, the 25-GHz spaced laser beam from a multiwavelength source is

modulated by a Mach-Zehnder modulator, and transmitted into a fiber collimator with

a beam waist of 0.2 mm in front of the reflective metasurface. All devices before the

metasurface, such as lasers, modulators, wave-shapers, EDFAs are connected by fibers.

Notably, the designed reflection angle would be needed to avoid having

blockage/diffraction from the source itself. As the designed extending angle of the

metasurface is as high as 40°, the critical reflection angle θ in this work is

approximately only 3.27° with a distance of 3.5 cm between the metasurface and

collimator (the width of the collimator is about 4 mm including the size of the clamp),

as shown in the inset of Figure S1. Therefore, the reflected beams will not be blocked

by the devices before the metasurface.

 Figure S1. Experimental setup for illumination of the reflective metasurface.

2. Full-duplex operation experiments.

Figure S2 shows the experimental configuration for the metasurface-based full-

duplex OWC system. Here we use two wavelengths of 1549.2 nm and 1549.4 nm as

optical carriers for downlink broadcasting transmission. For uplink transmission, we

use a launched wavelength of 1551 nm for user-1 and a wavelength of 1550.8 nm for

user-2, respectively. The free space transmission distance is 1 m and 2 m for user-1 and

user-2, respectively. Figure S3(a-c) show the launched spectra used for downlink and

uplink transmission. Figure S3(d,e) show the received spectrum in the downlink for

user-1 and user-2, respectively. Figure S3(f) shows the received spectrum to the base

station in the uplink transmission. From it, one can see the reflected wavelength signals

(1549.2 nm and 1549.4 nm) from the port-1 of the optical circulator 3 are detected
simultaneously with the uplink transmission wavelength of 1551 nm from user-1 and

wavelength of 1550.8 nm form user-2.

Figure S2. Experimental configuration for the metasurface based full-duplex OWC system. PC: polarization
controller, OSA: Optical Spectrum Analyzer.

Figure S3. (a) Downlink transmission: launched spectra for broadcasting with wavelengths of 1549.2 nm and
1549.4 nm. (b)Uplink transmission: launched spectrum for user-1 at wavelength of 1551 nm. (c) Uplink
transmission: launched spectrum for user-2 at wavelength of 1550.8 nm. (d) Downlink transmission: received
 spectrum for user-1. (e) Downlink transmission: received spectrum for user-2. (f) Uplink transmission: received
spectrum for the base station.

The details of the measured results shown in Figure S3(d,e) are summarized in Table

S1. For downlink transmission, both user-1 and user-2 can receive the broadcasted

optical signal formed by 1549.4 nm and 1549.2 nm from the base station. For user-1,

which is set about 1 m away from the base station, the downlink optical power losses

are 6.2+35.8=42 dB at 1549.4 nm and 5.9+36.3=42.2 dB at 1549.2nm. For user-2,

which is set about 2 m away from the base station, the downlink optical power losses

are 6.2+45.7=51.9 dB at 1549.4 nm and 5.9+42.3=48.2 dB at 1549.2 nm. The isolations

of optical circulator-1 and optical circulator-2 are 9.2+47.6=56.8 dB and 7.4+42.6=50

dB, respectively.
 Table S1. Measured optical power for different wavelength at downlink transmission
λ1 λ2 λ3 λ4
1551nm 1550.8nm 1549.4nm 1549.2nm

Launch power (dBm) 9.2 7.4 6.2 5.9

Received power (dBm)
-47.6 / -35.8 -36.3
@user-1
Received power (dBm)
/ -42.6 -45.7 -42.3
@user-2

The details of the measured results shown in Figure S3(f) are summarized in Table

S2. For uplink transmission, the based station can receive the mixed optical signal from

user-1 with 1551 nm and user-2 with 1550.8 nm simultaneously. The uplink optical

power losses of user-1 and user-2 are 9.6+37.5=47.1 dB and 7.4+41.7=49.1 dB,

respectively. The isolations of the optical circulator-3 are 6.2+49.2=55.4 dB and

5.9+48.6=54.5 dB at 1549.4 nm and 1549.2 nm, respectively.

The received spectra shown in Figure S3(d-f) verify that the proposed system

supports a full-duplex operation. The reflected signals can be filtered by a tunable

optical bandpass filter for signal detection, which also verifies the viewpoint that the

same wavelength cannot be used in both directions at the same time.

Table S2. Measured optical power for different wavelength at uplink transmission
λ1 λ2 λ3 λ4
1551nm 1550.8nm 1549.4nm 1549.2nm
Launch power (dBm) 9.6 7.4 6.2 5.9
Received power (dBm)
-37.5 -41.7 -49.2 -48.6
@base station

3. Design scheme of the dynamic wireless broadcasting system.

In principle, the beam spot numbers can be designed to be a large value to cover

arbitrary position of the reflection space by designing the orientation angle of silicon
bricks of the metasurface, but optical power will be limited for the detection. As a

compromise, we can combine a metasurface with 4×4 output beam spots and a liquid

crystal on silicon (LCoS) device to generate dynamic beam spots as an example, which

can cover the whole area on the ground.

The schematic diagram is shown in Figure S4(a). The collimated beam from the

transmitter collimator is illuminated on the metasurface and a 4×4 beam spot array is

generated. Then the spots are modulated by corresponding area on the LCoS device.[1]

By download the rotating grayscale image into the LCoS, each optical beam can be

steered in two dimensions. Therefore, each optical beam can cover an individual area

on the ground, and can be modulated to more sub-beams if there is more than one user

in the same area. Here it should be noted that the input polarization state must match

the requirements of LCoS device as the LCoS is polarization-sensitive.

Figure S4. (a) Schematic diagram for combination of metasurface and LCOS device for an active operation. (b)
Calculation of beam coverage area.
Figure S4(b) shows the calculation method of beam coverage area. In the above scheme,

the operating wavelength is λ=1550 nm, an LCoS device with pixel size of Δ=8 μm

(HOLOEYE company, type: PLUTO-TELCO) performs as an active two-dimensional

phase-modulated grating. The height of the room is 3 m. The maximum deflection angle

of the steered beam modulated by the LCoS is θ=λ/Δ≈10°. Hence, in Figure S2(b),

α=20°, β=10°. L2=H/cosβ=3.04 m, L1=H/cos(α+β) =3.46 m, R2≈L2×sin10°=0.52 m,

R1≈L1×sin10°=0.60 m, the length and width of the spot coverage area

L=W≈4×(R1+R2)=4.48 m. Therefore, the metasurface with 4×4 output beam spots after

being modulated by LCoS can cover 4.48×4.48 m2 area on the ground theoretically. We

can also increase the beam spot number to make this device cover a larger area.

References

[S1] A. Gomez, et al. "Point-to-multipoint holographic beamsteering techniques for

indoor optical wireless communications." Proc. SPIE, Broadband Access

Communication Technologies (2016): 9772.