Chinese scientists from Xidian University have developed a revolutionary “smart surface” capable of harvesting enemy radar waves for power and communication. This breakthrough, merging electromagnetic engineering with next-gen wireless tech, could redefine electronic warfare and propel China’s lead in the global 6G race, transforming a stealth aircraft’s greatest threat into its potential energy source.
The technology centers on an advanced reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), a dynamic, two-dimensional panel with countless tiny, controllable elements. Traditionally, RIS is seen as a tool to manipulate wireless signals for better 6G coverage and security. However, the Xidian University team has pushed it much further. Their version integrates wireless information transfer and energy harvesting into a single, self-sustaining hardware platform. According to their paper published in the peer-reviewed journal National Science Review, this establishes “a new mechanism for investigating wavefront manipulation and electromagnetic cooperative stealth.” In practice, this means future stealth platforms might not just hide from radar; they could siphon power from it and communicate using the same beams.
This dual-purpose capability could dramatically shift the dynamics of modern warfare and communications. “Instead of evading enemy surveillance, future stealth aircraft could instead use radar beams as a source of power and communication,” the research suggests. This concept of “electromagnetic cooperative stealth” involves multiple entities working together to minimize their detectability while potentially exploiting the adversary’s own emissions. The system can also create intentional dead radio zones to prevent eavesdropping and minimize interference, a feature noted by electronics experts like German group Rohde & Schwarz.
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The implications extend far beyond the battlefield into the core of the US-China tech race. 6G networks are envisioned to blur physical and digital worlds, enabling holograms, expansive digital twins, and a truly ubiquitous Internet of Things. A key hurdle is the transmission channel in cluttered environments. The Xidian team’s all-in-one radiation-scattering RIS is presented as a “powerful solution” due to its low cost, programmability, and ease of deployment. It could enable seamless line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight communication, vital for everything from urban 6G networks to satellite-to-ground links, an area of interest for the European Space Agency.
Perhaps most ingeniously, the system operates in a receiver mode to harvest ambient wireless energy. This harvested power could run the metasurface itself or charge other devices, moving toward truly self-powered sensing and communication systems. “This achieves significant savings in physical space and cost while ensuring multifunctionality across diverse application scenarios,” the team wrote. By combining sensing, communication, and power on one platform, they aim to overcome the traditional trade-offs between these functions, paving the way for “environment-adaptive integrated sensing and communication systems.”
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While nations like the United States are also racing to deploy advanced space-based data centers for AI and 6G, this Chinese innovation highlights a parallel, groundbreaking path in hardware physics. It represents a fundamental rethinking of electromagnetic waves—not just as signals to be transmitted or blocked, but as resources to be harvested and repurposed. If successfully scaled, this technology could give China a distinct advantage in securing its next-generation networks and equipping its future defense systems with a cunning, energy-harvesting layer of stealth.
