High-capacity millimetre-wave communications with orbital angular momentum multiplexing

One property of electromagnetic waves that has been recently explored is the ability to multiplex multiple beams, such that each beam has a unique helical phase front. The amount of phase front ‘twisting’ indicates the orbital angular momentum state number, and beams with different orbital angular momentum are orthogonal. Such orbital angular momentum based multiplexing can potentially increase the system capacity and spectral efficiency of millimetre-wave wireless communication links with a single aperture pair by transmitting multiple coaxial data streams. Here we demonstrate a 32-Gbit s−1 millimetre-wave link over 2.5 metres with a spectral efficiency of ~16 bit s−1 Hz−1 using four independent…

• RS
  Royal Society
• DA
  Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
• EA
  Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

  Award: EP/I012451/1