Digitally programmable metasurfaces are of potential use in next-generation mobile communications due to their ability to perform wireless data transmission without digital-to-analogue conversion or frequency mixing. However, communication networks based on programmable metasurfaces currently suffer from relatively low data transmission rates and low information mapping efficiencies (where the transmitted information per unit switching time is much lower than the information that encodes the programmable pattern). Here we report a programmable metasurface antenna that can approach the theoretical upper limit of the information mapping efficiency. Our approach combines non-recurrent encoding with spatial harmonic retrieval, and we show that the model maps most available programmable patterns to the first-harmonic direction in bijection. As a result, the approach can retrieve all of the encoding information through a single measurement. We also optimize the power efficiency of the communication architecture by using cascaded encoding to amplify the far-field radiation exclusively in the harmonic angles.

数字可编程超表面在下一代移动通信中具有潜在用途，因为它们能够在没有数模转换或混频的情况下执行无线数据传输。然而，基于可编程超表面的通信网络目前存在数据传输速率相对较低和信息映射效率低的问题（其中每单位切换时间传输的信息远低于编码可编程模式的信息）。在这里，我们报告了一种可编程的超表面天线，它可以接近信息映射效率的理论上限。我们的方法将非递归编码与空间谐波检索相结合，我们表明该模型将大多数可用的可编程模式映射到双射中的一谐波方向。因此，该方法可以通过一次测量检索所有编码信息。我们还通过使用级联编码来优化通信架构的功率效率，以仅在谐波角中放大远场辐射。