A review of reconfigurable metasurfaces for radar applications

Reconfigurable metasurfaces (RMSs) have emerged as powerful platforms for programmable manipulation of electromagnetic waves. Although widely studied in communications, imaging, and information security, RMSs have recently gained growing attention in radar systems. This growing interest calls for a systematic and application-oriented synthesis of metasurface-enabled radar technologies. In this review, we present a comprehensive overview of RMS-enabled radar applications from both functional and architectural perspectives. Recent advances are organized into five major domains: radar signal generation and modulation, radar deception and jamming, scattering control and stealth, direction-of-arrival estimation, and joint radar–communication systems. For each domain, we summarize the operating principles, functional roles, and representative system implementations of RMSs, highlighting how programmable electromagnetic interfaces are reshaping conventional radar architectures. Finally, we discuss key challenges related to performance limitations and outline future research directions. This review provides a structured and application-driven perspective on the evolving role of RMS in next-generation radar systems.