Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Capacity limits of spatially multiplexed free-space communication

Nature Photonics volume 9, pages 822–826 (2015)Cite this article

Subjects

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 24 December 2015

This article has been updated

Abstract

Increasing the information capacity per unit bandwidth has been a perennial goal of scientists and engineers1. Multiplexing of independent degrees of freedom, such as wavelength, polarization and more recently space, has been a preferred method to increase capacity2,3 in both radiofrequency and optical communication. Orbital angular momentum, a physical property of electromagnetic waves discovered recently4, has been proposed as a new degree of freedom for multiplexing to achieve capacity beyond conventional multiplexing techniques5,6,7,8,9, and has generated widespread and significant interest in the scientific community10,11,12,13,14. However, the capacity of orbital angular momentum multiplexing has not been established or compared to other multiplexing techniques. Here, we show that orbital angular momentum multiplexing is not an optimal technique for realizing the capacity limits of a free-space communication channel15,16,17 and is outperformed by both conventional line-of-sight multi-input multi-output transmission and spatial-mode multiplexing.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Schematic of transmission systems.
Figure 2: Comparison of singular values of the transmission matrix in descending order for different multiplexing/demultiplexing methods.
Figure 3: Spectral efficiencies and effective degrees of freedom (EDOF) for different multiplexing/demultiplexing methods.

Change history

  • 27 November 2015

    In the version of this Letter originally published, in Fig. 3a,b, the x axis labels should have been ‘SNR (dB)’. This has now been corrected in the online versions of the Letter.

References

  1. Shannon, C. E. A mathematical theory of communication. Bell Syst. Tech. J. 23, 45 (1948).

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  2. Ng, S. X., Hanzo, L. L., Keller, T. & Webb, W. Quadrature Amplitude Modulation: From Basics to Adaptive Trellis-Coded, Turbo-Equalised and Space–Time Coded OFDM, CDMA and MC-CDMA Systems (Wiley-IEEE, 2004).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Evangelides, S. G. Jr, Mollenauer, L. F., Gordon, J. P. & Bergano, N. S. Polarization multiplexing with solitons. J. Lightw. Technol. 10, 28–35 (1992).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Allen, L., Beijersbergen, M. W., Spreeuw, R. J. C. & Woerdman, J. P. Orbital angular momentum of light and the transformation of Laguerre–Gaussian laser modes. Phys. Rev. A 45, 8185–8189 (1992).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Fabrizio, T. et al. Encoding many channels on the same frequency through radio vorticity: first experimental test. New J. Phys. 14, 033001 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Willner, A. E., Wang, J. & Huang, H. A different angle on light communications. Science 337, 655–656 (2012).

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  7. Wang, J. et al. Terabit free-space data transmission employing orbital angular momentum multiplexing. Nature Photon. 6, 488–496 (2012).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  8. Yan, Y. et al. High-capacity millimetre-wave communications with orbital angular momentum multiplexing. Nature Commun. 5, 4876 (2014).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  9. Bozinovic, N. et al. Terabit-scale orbital angular momentum mode division multiplexing in fibers. Science 340, 1545–1548 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  10. Cartiledge, E. Adding a twist to radio technology: spiralling radio waves could revolutionize telecommunications. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/news.2011.114 (2011).

  11. Edfors, O. & Johansson, A. J. Is orbital angular momentum (OAM) based radio communication an unexploited area? IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag. 60, 1126–1131 (2012).

    Article  ADS  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  12. Michele, T., Christophe, C. & Julien, P.-C. Comment on ‘Reply to Comment on “Encoding many channels on the same frequency through radio vorticity: first experimental test” ’. New J. Phys. 15, 078001 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Tamburini, F. et al. Reply to Comment on “Encoding many channels on the same frequency through radio vorticity: first experimental test”. New J. Phys. 14, 118002 (2012).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  14. Kish, L. B. & Nevels, R. D. Twisted radio waves and twisted thermodynamics. PLoS ONE 8, e56086 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  15. Mair, A., Vaziri, A., Weihs, G. & Zeilinger, A. Entanglement of the orbital angular momentum states of photons. Nature 412, 313–316 (2001).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  16. Molina-Terriza, G., Torres, J. P. & Torner, L. Twisted photons. Nature Phys. 3, 305–310 (2007).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  17. Saleh, M. F., Di Giuseppe, G., Saleh, B. E. A. & Teich, M. C. Photonic circuits for generating modal, spectral, and polarization entanglement. IEEE Photon. J. 2, 736–752 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Karimi, E. et al. Generating optical orbital angular momentum at visible wavelengths using a plasmonic metasurface. Light Sci. Appl. 3, e167 (2014).

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  19. Xinlu, G. et al. Generating, multiplexing/demultiplexing and receiving the orbital angular momentum of radio frequency signals using an optical true time delay unit. J. Opt. 15, 105401 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Cai, X. et al. Integrated compact optical vortex beam emitters. Science 338, 363–366 (2012).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  21. Strain, M. J. et al. Fast electrical switching of orbital angular momentum modes using ultra-compact integrated vortex emitters. Nature Commun. 5, 4856 (2014).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  22. Mirhosseini, M., Malik, M., Shi, Z. & Boyd, R. W. Efficient separation of the orbital angular momentum eigenstates of light. Nature Commun. 4, ( 2013).

  23. Genevet, P., Lin, J., Kats, M. A. & Capasso, F. Holographic detection of the orbital angular momentum of light with plasmonic photodiodes. Nature Commun. 3, 1278 (2012).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  24. Phillips, R. L. & Andrews, L. C. Spot size and divergence for Laguerre Gaussian beams of any order. Appl. Opt. 22, 643–644 (1983).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  25. O'Sullivan, M. N., Mirhosseini, M., Malik, M. & Boyd, R. W. Near-perfect sorting of orbital angular momentum and angular position states of light. Opt. Express 20, 24444 (2012).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  26. Lavery, M. P. J. et al. The efficient sorting of light's orbital angular momentum for optical communications. Proc. SPIE 8542, 85421R (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Berkhout, G. C. G., Lavery, M. P. J., Courtial, J., Beijersbergen, M. W. & Padgett, M. J. Efficient sorting of orbital angular momentum states of light. Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 153601 (2010).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  28. Richardson, D. J., Fini, J. M. & Nelson, L. E. Space-division multiplexing in optical fibres. Nature Photon. 7, 354–362 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  29. Foschini, G. J. Layered space–time architecture for wireless communication in a fading environment when using multi-element antennas. Bell Labs Tech. J. 1, 41–59 (1996).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Goodman, J. W. Introduction to Fourier Optics (McGraw Hill, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  31. Wells, D. The Penguin Book of Curious and Interesting Numbers Revised Edition (Penguin, 1986).

    Google Scholar 

  32. Ren, Y. et al. Atmospheric turbulence effects on the performance of a free space optical link employing orbital angular momentum multiplexing. Opt. Lett. 38, 4062–4065 (2013).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  33. Li, G., Bai, N., Zhao, N. & Xia, C. Space-division multiplexing: the next frontier in optical communication. Adv. Opt. Photon. 6, 413–487 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Cover, T. & Thomas, J. A. Elements of Information Theory (Wiley, 2012).

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  35. Shiu, D.-S., Foschini, G. J., Gans, M. J. & Kahn, J. M. Fading correlation and its effect on the capacity of multielement antenna systems. IEEE Trans. Commun. 48, 502–513 (2000).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Key Basic Research Program of China (973), project #2014CB340104/3, NSFC projects 61377076, 61307085 and 61431009.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Optoelectronics Information Technology of Ministry of Education, College of Precision Instrument and Opto-Electronic Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China

    Ningbo Zhao, Xiaoying Li & Guifang Li

  2. CREOL, The College of Optics & Photonics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, 32816-2700, Florida, USA

    Guifang Li

  3. Edward L. Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford University, 348 Via Pueblo Mall, Stanford, 94305-4088, California, USA

    Joseph M. Kahn

Authors
  1. Ningbo Zhao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Xiaoying Li
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Guifang Li
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Joseph M. Kahn
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

N.Z., G.L. and J.M.K. conceived and designed the theoretical model. N.Z. and X.L. performed the simulations. N.Z., G.L. and J.M.K. analysed the data. N.Z., G.L. and J.M.K. co-wrote the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Guifang Li or Joseph M. Kahn.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary information

Supplementary information (PDF 699 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Zhao, N., Li, X., Li, G. et al. Capacity limits of spatially multiplexed free-space communication. Nature Photon 9, 822–826 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2015.214

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2015.214

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing