Phys.org  May 13, 2022 Realizing signal conversion between optical and microwave frequencies typically requires a complicated relay to perform multiple operations, which will consume additional hardware/time/energy resources. An international team of researchers (China, Singapore) has reported a light-to-microwave transmitter based on the time-varying and programmable metasurface integrated with a high-speed photoelectric detection circuit into a hybrid. Such a transmitter can convert a light intensity signal to two microwave binary frequency shift keying signals by using the dispersion characteristics of the metasurface to implement the frequency division multiplexing. In demonstration the system allowed dual-channel data transmissions in a light-to-microwave link. They […]