Stacked Intelligent Metasurfaces for Fully-Analog Wideband Beamforming Design

As next-generation wireless networks evolve, the need for higher bandwidth and improved communication efficiency becomes increasingly critical. Stacked intelligent metasurfaces (SIM) have emerged as a pivotal technology for enhancing wideband communications due to the multi-layer programmable structure. This paper presents a novel approach using SIM for fully-analog wideband beamforming, which optimizes performance across a wide frequency range while maintaining analog simplicity. By determining SIM configurations, this paper evaluates their influence on various system parameters such as spacing bandwidth, the number of sub-carriers, and the transmission bandwidth. Results demonstrate significant improvements in channel capacity compared to the previous SIM-assisted methods used for narrowband applications, highlighting both the potential and limitations of frequency-specific optimizations in SIM applications.