Information Metasurface‐Enabled Dynamically Reconfigurable Radar Electromagnetic Phantoms

ABSTRACT Radar electromagnetic phantoms aim to deceive radar systems by introducing virtual targets—entities that do not physically exist—into radar imagery, thereby inducing erroneous recognition. Information metasurfaces, functioning as digitally reconfigurable electromagnetic reflectors, offer unprecedented capabilities in multidimensional radar target signatures control. Nevertheless, existing space‐coding‐based techniques are constrained by static phantom image templates, limiting their ability to generate dynamically reconfigurable radar phantoms. Temporal modulation strategies are susceptible to synchronization errors under non‐cooperative scenarios. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a novel method for generating image‐level, dynamically stable, and reconfigurable radar electromagnetic phantoms via information metasurfaces. The proposed approach leverages the geometric theory of diffraction (GTD) to extract characteristic parameters oftargets. These parameters subsequently guide the design of asynchronous frequency‐modulated sequences implemented on the metasurface. A 1‐bit information metasurface prototype was developed and experimentally validated. The results demonstrate its capability to generate a variety of reconfigurable radar phantoms in high‐resolution range profiles (HRRPs) in real time. Furthermore, both human radar image interpretation and artificial neural network (ANN)‐based classification exhibit high confidence in identifying the modulated imagery as authentic targets, thereby confirming the effectiveness of deception. The developed metasurface and its associated modulation strategy hold significant promise for critical target protection in electronic warfare scenarios.