Orbital Angular Momentum Data Transmission Using a Silicon Photonic Mode Multiplexer

In the realm of free-space optical (FSO) communication systems, the utilization of orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing has garnered significant attention. However, OAM beams are subject to atmospheric turbulence (AT) during transmission in free space, resulting in distortions of the phase front, intermodal crosstalk, and mode-dependent loss (MDL). While techniques such as adaptive optics and digital signal processing can mitigate these effects, inconsistencies in OAM mode performance persist due to MDL. Some studies have evaluated an MDL-impaired mode division multiplexing system for non-unitary multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channels based on maximum likelihood detection. Nevertheless, the computational complexity remains considerably higher compared to simpler yet suboptimal advanced MIMO decoders, such as successive interference cancellation (SIC) with zero-forcing/minimum mean square error (ZF/MMSE). On the other hand, an OAM mode and radial index are two distinct indices of Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) modes, with the potential to carry a large amount of information. To the best of our knowledge, no prior studies have explored the impact and mitigation strategies for MDL induced by atmospheric turbulence in an FSO system utilizing both OAM mode and radial index multiplexing with MMSE-SIC receiver. This paper introduces OAM multiplexing holography to generate OAM modes. We perform both analytical and numerical analyses of the orbital angular momentum spectra associated with distorted single-mode and multiplexed LG beams. This is achieved by generating holograms, incorporating random phase screens along the propagation path, and varying the refractive index structure constants. We mathematically develop and simulate an MMSE-SIC receiver for OAM multiplexed FSO for different radial values for the first time and compared its BER to Zero Forcing-SIC and K-best detectors. Additionally, orthogonal space-time block coding is employed at the transmitter to enhance the overall performance of the system.

A pivotal issue of the conventional optical fiber communications networks is to meet the explosively increasing requirement in data traffic. In order to meet this ever-increasing demand, there have been a lot of research and industrial development efforts to utilize the photon in various dimensions such as wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), space division multiplexing (SDM), mode division multiplexing (MDM) and so on. Fueled by emerging bandwidth-hungry applications, orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes and their multiplexing have recently gained much attention due to its special doughnut-shaped intensity distribution, as well as its unique helical phase wavefront with the theoretically infinite topological value. The OAM modes with different topological charge values are orthogonal to each other, which has provided a new degree of freedom in MDM. In this paper, we propose and design a Ge-doped air-core ring fiber, which can support numerous OAM modes. By varying the mole fraction of GeO2 and adjusting the structure parameter, including the air-core radius and the GeO2-doped ring width, we study the influence of the different fiber parameters on the total supported OAM mode number. The hollow silica fiber with a 50-μm air core and a 1.5-μm thickness of Gedoped ring is designed in simulation to support fiber eigenmodes up to HE112,1 and EH107,1. This provides 436 OAM modes at 1550 nm while maintaining radially single mode condition. Moreover, it can support more than 400 OAM modes from 1260 nm to 1625 nm, covering O, E, S, C, and L bands.

Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) multiplexing is a new multiplexing dimension after the existing multiplexing technologies. OAM and MIMO technology are combined to the OAM-MIMO, which can greatly improve the channel capacity of wireless optical communication. The coding and modulation of information, the generation, transmission and separation of OAM superposition states are studied, the influence of atmospheric turbulence on OAM superposition states is discussed. It lays a theoretical foundation and provides an experimental basis for the application of OAM multiplexing technology.

The orbital angular momentum (OAM) states are used for OAM modulation and OAM multiplexing in free-space optical (FSO) communication systems to enhance the transmission quality and capacity. Although a few impactful methods had been developed to measure static OAM states, the fast and accurate recognition of dynamic OAM states in FSO communications remains a challenge due to the OAM crosstalk easily induced by the atmospheric turbulence. In this paper, we present a new simple statistical recognition method realized by utilizing the turbulence-induced crosstalk distribution, other than the routine way to use the spatial intensity patterns. The proposed method is based on acquiring the priori OAM crosstalk distribution of the training optical data, and then using similarity analysis to recognize the OAM states of the information optical data. Its availability and accuracy are validated through the computer simulations. The recognition accuracy under relatively strong turbulence conditions can be improved by using wavefront compensation and specific distance calculation.

Optical fiber communication is known as the backbone of communication today for voice, video, and data transmission. Recent advancements in optical technologies are leading us to many new forms of generation of orbital angular momentum (OAM) waves and its transmission technologies. Among them are hypergeometric waveform (HG), Bessel’s waveforms, Laguerre Gaussian waveforms, and other forms of OAMs. This mode of communication is by the twisted form of electromagnetic wave which can accommodate a larger number of channels making communication simpler for wired and wireless communication. In this paper, various methods of OAM waveform generation are presented and are compared in details discussing the various needs in communication. OAM multiplexing is done by spatial division multiplexing (SDM) and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). Methods of OAM communication, generation techniques, power analysis, and bit error analysis prove efficient transmission capability of OAM waves using low power consumption and low bit error rate in optical communication networks. OAM from fiber can be directly communicated to atmosphere which is found very useful for short distance wireless communication. Experimental validation is discussed for HG, Bessel’s waveforms, and LG waveforms. Pure Optical Vertices (OV) are generated by VCSELs (vertical cavity surface emitting lasers) and transmitted by (MMF) multimode fibers. Various atmospheric effects and challenges are also elaborated in this paper. RSoft OptSim software is used for simulation.

Atmospheric turbulence (AT) induced crosstalk can significantly impair the performance of a free-space optical (FSO) communication link using orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing. In this paper, we propose a multiple-user detection (MUD) turbulence mitigation scheme in an OAM-multiplexed FSO communication link. First, we present a MUD equivalent communication model for an OAM-multiplexed FSO communication link under AT. In the equivalent model, each input bit stream represents one user’s information. The deformed OAM spatial modes caused by AT, instead of the pure OAM spatial modes, are used as information carriers, and the overlapping between the deformed OAM spatial modes are computed as the correlation coefficients between the users. Then, we present a turbulence mitigation scheme based on MUD idea to enhance AT tolerance of the OAM-multiplexed FSO communication link. In the proposed scheme, the crosstalk caused by AT is used as a useful component to deduce users’ information. The numerical results show that the performance of the OAM-multiplexed communication link has greatly improved by the proposed scheme. When the turbulence strength is 1 × 10−15 m−2/3, the transmission distance is 1000 m and the channel signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is 26 dB, the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of four spatial multiplexed OAM modes lm = +1,+2,+3,+4 are all close to 10−5, and there is a 2–3 fold increase in the BER performance in comparison with those results without the proposed scheme. In addition, the proposed scheme is more effective for an OAM-multiplexed FSO communication link with a larger OAM mode topological charge interval. The proposed scheme is a promising direction for compensating the interference caused by AT in the OAM-multiplexed FSO communication link.

The article purpose is to introduce the reader to a number of non-standard ideas that reflect new paradigms of modern radio physics, radio photonics, radio engineering, radar, artificial intelligence, and so on. The author characterizes the new concept, which takes full advantage of the physical properties of electromagnetic waves and the universality of the topology of fractal sets, as a “multi-profile radio”. New concepts for processing of multidimensional signals in modern radio physical systems are considered. Presents a wide range of applications and implementation of topological texture-fractal processing (TTFP) of information created by the author and his students in radio physical systems. Modern ideas of photon-ics and radiophotonic are discussed: dynamic manipulation of electromagnetic waves using intelligent metasurfaces (MS). A review on THz wireless communication channels using orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing is presented. A review of THz wireless communication channels using orbital angu-lar momentum multiplexing is presented.

Angular momentum of light can be divided into spin angular momentum and orbital angular momentum (OAM). Due to the theoretically unlimited orthogonal states, the physical dimension of OAM provides a potential solution to boost the information capacity. The OAM multiplexing and modulation techniques have been implemented to meet the continuous growth of bandwidth requirements, resulting in the concept of OAM optical communication. However, the performances of the traditional optical OAM detection techniques degrade seriously in the practical application of OAM optical communications. Thanks to the powerful data analysis advantages, the cutting-edge machine learning (ML) algorithms have been widely used in the field of image processing, laying the technical foundation for OAM recognition. This paper reviews the recent advances on OAM optical communications that are enhanced by ML methods. More than the traditional OAM detection methods, the OAM demodulation methods based on multiple network architectures, including the support vector machine, self-organizing map, feed-forward neural network, convolutional neural network, and diffractive deep optical neural network (D2NN), have been summarized. We also discuss the development of the spiking neural network and on-chip D2NN, opening a possible way to facilitate the future ultra-low power and ultra-fast OAM demodulation technology.

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) has gained great interest due to its most attractive feature of high dimensionality, and several ground-breaking demonstrations in communication based on OAM multiplexing have been carried out. Accordingly, a rapid data-density growth from OAM multiplexing has posed a great challenge to the signal-processing layer. Meanwhile, in another area, optical signal-processing circuit based on photon-phonon conversion has received considerable attention and made rapid progress. Here, with an aim of finding the intersection between OAM multiplexing and photon-phonon conversion, we report on the observation of reversible OAM photon-phonon conversion. A specific OAM state can be flexibly and controllably interconverted between photonic and phononic domains via Brillouin photon-phonon coupling within the decay time of acoustic signal, in which OAM and spin angular momentum are independently conserved. Our result demonstrates the controllable OAM transfer between photons and phonons, shows the potential of using OAM multiplexing to extend the capacity of photon-phonon conversion based signal-processing scheme, and may trigger the development of OAM-multiplexed photon-phonon circuit.

Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology enables high-speed and low-power consumption transmission for communication systems by utilizing an extremely wide bandwidth. However, its large frequency bandwidth poses significant challenges for integration with conventional wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) techniques, thereby limiting further enhancement of communication capacity density. Although orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing, operating independently of the wavelength dimension, offers a promising avenue to increase the capacity density of UWB communication systems, mode coupling in few-mode fibers (FMF) leads to severe inter-mode crosstalk, resulting in signal distortion and a substantial degradation in communication performance. To address this issue, we propose incorporating probabilistic amplitude shaping (PAS) into an OAM-multiplexed UWB system. This scheme combines a constant composition distribution matcher (CCDM) with a low-density parity-check (LDPC) coding module to achieve joint shaping and error correction. Concurrently, discrete Fourier transform (DFT) precoding is introduced to equalize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) across subcarriers and suppress high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). Experimental results demonstrate the successful transmission of a 4-channel OAM-multiplexed UWB signal at 1.89 × 4 Gbit/s over 5 km FMF. Compared to the original 64-QAM signal, the unshaped (uniformly distributed) 64-QAM signal achieved improvements in optical receiver sensitivity of 7.5 dB, 6.5 dB, and 6.0 dB at symbol rates of 3.0, 3.6, and 4.0 bits/QAM symbol, respectively. The application of probabilistic shaping, which reduces the occurrence probability of high-amplitude symbols, yielded an additional sensitivity gain of 0.5 dB. These results validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and its significant potential for enhancing the performance of multiplexed transmission systems.

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing technology is expected as one of the prospective candidates for sustaining the further increment of data-transmission capacity in the optical communication systems. Advanced multiplexing technology of combining OAM-based mode division multiplexing (MDM) in the multicore fiber (MCF) with wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) can further improve the transmission rate and spectrum efficiency in the communication systems. In this paper, a multi-ring-air-core fiber (MRACF) supporting thousands of OAM modes is designed and analyzed. The tradeoffs between ring number/density and their corresponding system performance parameters in this fiber are systematically investigated. Based on the analytical results, MRACF with 37 rings can support a record high 4440 radially fundamental OAM modes at 1550 nm, featuring <−53 dB inter-ring crosstalk and >5.67 × 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">−4</sup> intra-ring modal effective refractive index difference. Furthermore, a record-high 4144 radially fundamental OAM modes with <−40 dB inter-ring crosstalk can be supported across C and L bands from 1530 nm to 1625 nm, which is one order of magnitude larger than the number of linearly polarized (LP) modes or supermodes ever reported within one single fiber.

This paper proposes an inter-mode interference suppression method that employs only even-numbered modes for uniform circular array (UCA)-based orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing. Given that interference from adjacent OAM modes becomes severe when the beam axis is misaligned, the proposed method uses only the even-numbered modes while leaving the odd-numbered modes unused, which effectively prevents the inter-mode interference. Moreover, we verify the effectiveness of the proposed method by applying it to multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) with zero-forcing (ZF) alone or ZF with successive interference cancellation because severe inter-mode interference is caused by transmitting multiple streams from multiple UCAs in each mode. The effectiveness of the proposed method compared with the traditional method, which uses all OAM modes, is demonstrated in terms of the system capacity through computer simulations.

In general, OAM can be regarded as an additional degree of freedom of a light beam or even of a single photon, to be added to the standard ones ordinarily exploited in current photonic technologies. In many respects OAM resembles polarization, with which it shares many features. However, while polarization is characterized by two orthogonal basis states, OAM is defined in an unbounded space (a Hilbert space in the case of photons). Therefore, it is in principle possible to encode a much larger amount of information in the OAM space than in the polarization space, e.g., achieving a greater channel capacity. This property makes OAM highly attractive for future optical communication systems. Specifically, OAM states could be used as a different dimension to create an additional set of data carriers in a Space Division Multiplexing (SDM) system. Moreover, OAM multiplexing does not rely on the wavelength or polarization, indicating that OAM could be used in addition to Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) and Polarization Division Multiplexing (PDM) techniques to boost system capacity. This paper will discuss the potential applications of OAM of light in optical communication systems, and highlight recent advances in CMOS-compatible silicon photonic integrated device technology for OAM generation, manipulation, and (de)multiplexing.

The ability to measure the orbital angular momentum (OAM) distribution of vortex light is essential for OAM applications. Although there have been many studies on the measurement of OAM modes, it is difficult to quantitatively and instantaneously measure the power distribution among different OAM modes, let alone measure the phase distribution among them. In this work, we propose an OAM complex spectrum analyzer that enables simultaneous measurements of the power and phase distributions of OAM modes by employing the rotational Doppler effect. The original OAM mode distribution is mapped to an electrical spectrum of beat signals using a photodetector. The power and phase distributions of superimposed OAM beams are successfully retrieved by analyzing the electrical spectrum. We also extend the measurement technique to other spatial modes, such as linear polarization modes. These results represent a new landmark in spatial mode analysis and show great potential for applications in OAM-based systems and optical communication systems with mode-division multiplexing.

&lt;p&gt;Mode-division multiplexing (MDM) and wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) are regarded as effective solutions for enhancing the communication capacity of fiber-optic transmission system. To extend the transmission distance, a suitable amplification technique is required to amplify the signal light, with distributed Raman amplifier (DRA) offering a high-flat gain. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate the transmission of 3 orbital angular momentum (OAM) mode-division multiplexing and 9 wavelength-division multiplexing ranging from 1530 nm to 1610 nm over 104-km self-designed ring-core fiber (RCF) with the assistance of DRA. The homemade all-fiber mode selective couplers (MSCs) are able to (de)multiplex OAM modes (OAM01, OAM11, OAM21) efficiently in long-distance MDM+WDM fiber-optic transmission system. The OAM-DRA provides high gain (with the on-off gain greater than 10 dB) as well as flat gain (with a differential wavelength gain less than 0.88 dB and a differential mode gain less than 0.28 dB) over the C+L band.&lt;/p&gt;