The research team led by Professor Si Liming at the School of Integrated Circuits and Electronics, Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), has recently made significant progress in speech-controlled reconfigurable intelligent metasurfaces.

This technology deeply integrates voice recognition, visual perception, wireless power transfer, information communication, and intelligent metasurfaces, enabling real-time wireless power transfer and data communication to designated target devices through natural voice commands. It holds the potential to alleviate concerns about the battery life of electronic devices such as mobile phones, drones, and implantable medical devices.

The findings have been published under the title Speech-Controlled Reconfigurable Intelligent Metasurface for Real-Time Wireless Power Transfer and Communication in the journal Research, a top-tier journal in the first quartile of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' journal classification.

A diagram for a speech-controlled intelligent metasurface for real-time integrated sensing and communication

In daily life, electronic devices, especially wireless ones, often cause users to worry about insufficient battery power. However, this voice-controlled intelligent metasurface allows devices to achieve wireless "aerial recharging" with just a spoken command, without the need for plugging in or shutting down.

Experiments conducted by the BIT team have validated a voice-controlled intelligent metasurface system operating in the 5.8GHz Wi-Fi band, capable of providing wireless power to both fixed and moving multiple targets, with received RF power exceeding 25dBm.

The results indicate that the system can stably output more than 4.5 volts of power to target devices, meeting the wireless energy needs of mobile phones, drones, implantable medical devices, IoT sensors, wearable devices, and smart terminals. This technology efficiently integrates the transfer of matter, energy, and information, not only addressing the battery life challenges of electronic devices but also enabling the simultaneous transmission of large-capacity data, such as high-definition video, demonstrating an integrated synergy of sensing and communication capabilities.

Paper details: Lin Dong, Liming Si*, Yueze Liu, Qitao Shen, Pengcheng Tang, Genghao Wu, Rong Niu, Qingqing Wu, Weiren Zhu*, “Speech-Controlled Reconffgurable Intelligent Metasurface for RealTime Wireless Power Transfer and Communication”, Research, vol. 8, pp: 0831, 2025.