Programmable metasurfaces have great potential for the implementation of low-complexity and low-cost phased arrays. Due to the difficulty of multiple-bit phase control, conventional programmable metasurfaces suffer a relatively high sidelobe level (SLL). In this manuscript, a time modulation strategy is introduced in the 1-bit transmissive programmable metasurface for reducing the SLLs of the generated patterns. After the periodic time modulation, harmonics are generated in each reconfigurable unit and the phase of the first-order harmonic can be dynamically controlled by applying different modulation sequences onto the corresponding unit. Through the high-speed modulation of the real-time periodic coding sequences on the metasurface by the programmable bias circuit, the equivalent phase shift accuracy to each metasurface unit can be improved to 6-bit and thus the SLLs of the metasurface could be reduced remarkably. The proposed time-modulated strategy is verified both numerically and experimentally with a transmissive programmable metasurface, which obtains an aperture efficiency over 34% and reduced SLLs of about -20 dB. The proposed design could offer a novel approach of a programmable metasurface framework for radar detection and secure communication applications.
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