Novel technologies that enhance the capacity of communication networks without consuming extra frequency and time resources are highly desired to fulfill the ever-increasing demand for data transmission capabilities. META-LIFI will develop a breakthrough miniaturized orbital angular momentum (OAM) emitter, which is suitable for power-efficient operation, adaptive modulation, and massive production at low cost, serving as an enabling factor for the next generation of smart free-space optical communication and Light-Fidelity (LiFi) Networks.
 Such ambitious objectives will be tackled via a multipronged approach delivering versatile, diverse, and high-quality OAM light sources modes with sufficient modal purity. Active metasurfaces based on NOEMS will be obtained, first, to provide adaptive modulation with lower power consumption for on-chip applications. Second, the control of wavefront in real-time through on-chip integration of MEMS-enabled active metasurface with VCSELs will be adopted for the generation of optical vortex lasers with tunable topological charges. The proposed vortex lasers will enable a new type of reconfigurable OAM lasers array with ultra-compactness, which is an ideal multichannel lasers source advancing the deployment of OAM multiplexing systems with efficient, and compact technologies. Third, merging reconfigurable OAM-multiplexing with the latest artificial neural network (ANN) will enable active linkage between transmitter and receiver for a timely implementation of smart free-space communicating system.  
META-LIFI will not only enable breakthrough improvements relative to state-of-the-art modulation of the light in the combination of the miniaturization of NOEMS, giving rise to a new class of active metasurfaces, and their integration on a single device, but also will chart a path for high speed, smart free-space communication applications capitalizing on versatile and high-quality OAM beams for exploitation beyond proof-of-concept.

Project partners

• Tampere University - Finland (coordinator)
• University of Strathclyde - United Kingdom
• Middle East Technical University - Turkey