China’s 6G engineers have built a special metasurface system that can bounce wireless signals around like a precision mirror to fill in dead spots, while still sensing people moving about – just like a radar.

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.

In conventional wireless networks, walls and pillars are obstacles that block signals. The innovation applies a specially engineered artificial electromagnetic material as a sort of “smart skin” over wall surfaces.