  In the coming 6G communications, the internet of things (IoT) serves as a key
enabler to collect environmental information and is expected to achieve
ubiquitous deployment. However, it is challenging for traditional IoT sensors
to meet this expectation because of their requirements of power supplies and
frequent maintenance, which are due to their power-demanding sense and transmit
modules. To address this challenge, we propose a meta-IoT sensing system, where
the IoT sensors are based on specially designed meta-materials. The meta-IoT
sensors achieve simultaneous sensing and transmission by physical reflection
and require no power supplies. In order to design a meta-IoT sensing system
with optimal sensing accuracy, we jointly consider the sensing and transmission
of meta-IoT sensors and propose efficient algorithms to optimize the meta-IoT
structure and the sensing function at the receiver. As an example, we apply the
meta-IoT system to sensing environmental temperature and humidity levels.
Simulation results show that by using the proposed algorithm, the sensing
accuracy can be largely increased.
