Beams carrying orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) have gained much interest due to their unique amplitude and phase structures. In terms of communication systems, each of the multiple independent data-carrying beams can have a different OAM value and be orthogonal to all other beams. This paper will describe the use of multiplexing and the simultaneous transmission of multiple OAM beams for enhancing the capacity of communication systems. We will highlight the key advances and technical challenges in the areas of (a) free-space and fiber communication links, (b) mitigation of modal coupling and channel crosstalk effects, (c) classical and quantum systems, and (d) optical and radio frequency beam multiplexing.
A time-dependent change in the refractive index of a material leads to a change in the frequency of an optical beam passing through that medium. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that this effectknown as adiabatic frequency conversion (AFC)can be significantly enhanced by a nonlinear epsilon-near-zero-based (ENZ-based) plasmonic metasurface. Specifically, by using a 63-nm-thick metasurface, we demonstrate a large, tunable, and broadband frequency shift of up to ∼11.2 THz with a pump intensity of 4 GW/ cm 2 . Our results represent a decrease of ∼10 times in device thickness and 120 times in pump peak intensity compared with the cases of bare, thicker ENZ materials for the similar amount of frequency shift. Our findings might potentially provide insights for designing efficient time-varying metasurfaces for the manipulation of ultrafast pulses.
In free-space optical communications that use both amplitude and phase data modulation (for example, in quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)), the data are typically recovered by mixing a Gaussian local oscillator with a received Gaussian data beam. However, atmospheric turbulence can induce power coupling from the transmitted Gaussian mode to higher-order modes, resulting in a significantly degraded mixing efficiency and system performance. Here, we use a pilot-assisted self-coherent detection approach to overcome this problem. Specifically, we transmit both a Gaussian data beam and a frequency-offset Gaussian pilot tone beam such that both beams experience similar turbulence and modal coupling. Subsequently, a photodetector mixes all corresponding pairs of the beams’ modes. During mixing, a conjugate of the turbulence-induced modal coupling is generated and compensates the modal coupling experienced by the data, and thus the corresponding modes of the pilot and data mix efficiently. We demonstrate a 12 Gbit s−1 16-QAM polarization-multiplexed free-space optical link that is resistant to turbulence.
Orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) multiplexing has been utilized to increase the channel capacity in both millimeter-wave and optical domains. Terahertz (THz) wireless communication is attracting increasing attention due to its broadband spectral resources. Thus, it might be valuable to explore the system performance of THz OAM links to further increase the channel capacity. In this paper, we study through simulations the fundamental system-degrading effects when using multiple OAM beams in THz communications links under atmospheric turbulence. We simulate and analyze the effects of divergence, turbulence, limited-size aperture, and misalignment on the signal power and crosstalk of THz OAM links. We find through simulations that the system-degrading effects are different in two scenarios with atmosphere turbulence: (a) when we consider the same strength of phasefront distortion, faster divergence (i.e., lower frequency; smaller beam waist) leads to higher power leakage from the transmitted mode to neighbouring modes; and (b) however, when we consider the same atmospheric turbulence, the divergence effect tends to affect the power leakage much less, and the power leakage increases as the frequency, beam waist, or OAM order increases. Simulation results show that: (i) the crosstalk to the neighbouring mode remains < − 15 dB for a 1-km link under calm weather, when we transmit OAM + 4 at 0.5 THz with a beam waist of 1 m; (ii) for the 3-OAM-multiplexed THz links, the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) increases by ~ 5–7 dB if the mode spacing increases by 1, and SIR decreases with the multiplexed mode number; and (iii) limited aperture size and misalignment lead to power leakage to other modes under calm weather, while it tends to be unobtrusive under bad weather.
Due to its absorption properties in atmosphere, the mid-infrared (mid-IR) region has gained interest for its potential to provide high data capacity in free-space optical (FSO) communications. Here, we experimentally demonstrate wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) and mode-division-multiplexing (MDM) in a ~0.5 m mid-IR FSO link. We multiplex three ~3.4 μm wavelengths (3.396 μm, 3.397 μm, and 3.398 μm) on a single polarization, with each wavelength carrying two orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) beams. As each beam carries 50-Gbit/s quadrature-phase-shift-keying data, a total capacity of 300 Gbit/s is achieved. The WDM channels are generated and detected in the near-IR (C-band). They are converted to mid-IR and converted back to C-band through the difference frequency generation nonlinear processes. We estimate that the system penalties at a bit error rate near the forward error correction threshold include the following: (i) the wavelength conversions induce ~2 dB optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) penalty, (ii) WDM induces ~1 dB OSNR penalty, and (iii) MDM induces ~0.5 dB OSNR penalty. These results show the potential of using multiplexing to achieve a ~30X increase in data capacity for a mid-IR FSO link.
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