Towards the internet of metamaterial things: Software enablers for user-customizable electromagnetic wave propagation

Wireless telecommunications are ubiquitously networking computers, from mobiles in our palms to datacentres in the arctic circle, enabling emerging and prospective systems, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), that build upon omnipresent mobile networks. Intelligent Reconfigurable Surfaces (IRS) are ultra-thin, two-dimensional electromagnetic devices that can adaptively optimize a wireless channel providing massive enhancement to link budget and channel capacity. In this chapter, we introduce the Internet of MetaMaterial Things (IoMMT), a new paradigm concerning the software-controlled networking of artificial materials with real-time tunable physical properties, including IRS but extending also to any form of information-carrying energy waves: electromagnetic, acoustic, and mechanical. The IoMMT will significantly enrich the IoT ecosystem by connecting anything at any place by optimizing the physical energy propagation between the meta-material devices during their lifetime, via 'eco-firmware' updates. First, the means for abstracting the complex physics behind these materials are explored, showing their integration into the IoT world. Subsequently, two novel software categories for the material things are proposed, namely the meta-material Application Programming Interface and Meta-material Middleware, which will be in charge of the application and physical domains, respectively. Regarding the API, the chapter provides the data model and workflows for obtaining and setting the physical properties of a material via callbacks. The Meta-material Middleware is tasked with matching these callbacks to the corresponding material-altering actuations through embedded elements. Furthermore, a full stack implementation of the software for the electromagnetic meta-material case is presented and evaluated, incorporating all the aforementioned aspects. Finally, interesting extensions and envisioned use cases of the IoMMT concept are discussed.