Tracking the sun's direction with a wide-angle metasurface for navigation

Abstract

We report a lightweight metasurface with wide field of view (FOV), which can calculate incident angle by the focus of the sun for navigation. The solar altitude angle and solar azimuth angle for navigation can be resolved with converting the coordinate system to connect the sun with the focus. The designed metasurface overcomes bulky devices and bad weather owing to the fact that the metasurface operates at short-wavelength infrared band (SWIR) that penetrates smoke and fog.