Meta-antenna: Mechanically Frequency Reconfigurable Metamaterial Antennas
Name
3746059.3747760.pdf
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29.5 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
e15c40e05815cccdcf1b4826e1ae5bb6
Author(s)
AlAlawi, Marwa
Zheng, Regina
Ahn, Sooyeon
Yan, Katherine
Sethapakdi, Ticha
Zhu, Junyi
Mueller, Stefanie
Date Issued
September 27, 2025
Publisher
ACM|The 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
Citation
Marwa AlAlawi, Regina Zheng, Sooyeon Ahn, Katherine Yan, Ticha Sethapakdi, Junyi Zhu, and Stefanie Mueller. 2025. Meta-antenna: Mechanically Frequency Reconfigurable Metamaterial Antennas. In Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 36, 1–19.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We introduce Meta-antenna, a design and fabrication pipeline for creating frequency reconfigurable antennas while making use of a single type of mechanical metamaterial structure. Unlike traditional static antenna systems with fixed radiation patterns and frequency responses per geometry, Meta-antenna leverages mechanical reconfiguration to alter the radiation and geometry characteristics of the antenna, making it more versatile for sensing and communication. Meta-antenna provides a design space of resonance frequency from 500 MHz to 6.3 GHz (≥ 10dB) upon the structure’s compression, bending, or rotation. Additionally, we provide an Ansys-based editor that allows users to generate metamaterial antenna geometries and simulate their resonance frequency. We also provide a code template for Meta-antenna based sensing interactions. Our technical evaluation demonstrates that our fabricated Meta-antenna structures remain functional even after 10,000 compression cycles. Finally, we contribute three example applications showcasing Meta-antenna’s potential in adaptive personal devices, smart home systems, and tangible user interfaces.
Description
UIST ’25, Busan, Republic of Korea
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1145/3746059.3747760
