Coherent Target Cancellation and Deceptive Jamming Through a Multi-Region Time-Coding Metasurface.

Existing metasurface-based radar countermeasures commonly manipulate echoes from metasurface-covered regions, whereas protecting exposed scattering centers that cannot accommodate metasurfaces remains challenging. This paper presents a multi-region time-coding metasurface (MRTCM) architecture for coherent target cancellation and deceptive jamming. The proposed system uses multiple independently controlled metasurface regions distributed over available platform surfaces. Each region generates zeroth-order and higher-order harmonic components through periodic phase modulation, and these components coherently combine with echoes from uncovered areas. The zeroth-order component is invariant under cyclic shifts of the coding sequence, enabling stable cancellation during multi-pulse coherent processing without locking radar-pulse arrival to the start of the coding cycle. Higher-order harmonics can shift the apparent range of the metasurface response and support cancellation at range-separated cells, but require accurate timing and synchronization. Numerical simulations demonstrate more than 40 dB suppression in high-resolution range profiles and validate the cancellation behavior under moving-target detection processing. The MRTCM architecture therefore provides a theoretically grounded framework for electromagnetic protection when full metasurface coverage is impractical.