结构光场是一类对光波空间结构进行剪裁的特殊光场。广义的结构光场包括具有空间变化的幅度、相位、偏振分布和空间阵列分布的光场。结构光场因其独特性而在光学操控、显微、成像、计量、传感、非线性光学、天文学、量子科学和光通信等领域获得了广泛应用。基于结构光场的光通信技术包括复用通信和编译码通信。本文回顾了结构光场编译码通信的研究进展,全面综述了结构光场的产生方法以及不同空间模式(轨道角动量模式、无衍射贝塞尔模式、线偏振模式、矢量模式、空间阵列)、不同编码方式(直接模式编码、高速映射)和不同应用场景(光子芯片、自由空间、光纤)的结构光场的编译码通信,并对其未来发展趋势进行了分析和展望。结构光场编译码通信开发了光场空间域维度资源,有望为解决光通信新容量危机和实现光通信可持续扩容提供潜在的解决方案。

Structured light fields are a kind of special light fields that have tailored lightwave spatial structure. The generalized structured light fields are these kinds of fields including spatially variant amplitude, phase and polarization distribution as well as space array. Structured light fields have seen wide applications in optical manipulation, microscopy, imaging, metrology, sensing, nonlinear optics, astronomy, quantum science and optical communications owing to their distinct advantages. Structured light communication techniques include multiplexing communications and coding/decoding communications. In this review article, the recent progress of structured light coding/decoding communications is retrospected. Various generation methods of structured light fields and structured light coding/decoding communications with different spatial modes (orbital angular momentum mode, non-diffraction Bessel mode, linearly polarized mode, vector mode, space array), different coding methods (direct mode coding, high-speed mapping), and different scenarios (photonic chip, free space, fiber) are comprehensively reviewed. Future trend and perspective are also discussed. Structured light coding/decoding communications exploit the space domain dimensional resources of light fields, which provide a potential solution to address the new capacity crunch of optical communications and enable sustainable expansion of optical communications.