Orbital Angular Momentum Waves: Generation, Detection and Emerging Applications

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) has aroused a widespread interest in many fields, especially in telecommunications due to its potential for unleashing new capacity in the severely congested spectrum of commercial communication systems. Beams carrying OAM have a helical phase front and a field strength with a singularity along the axial center, which can be used for information transmission, imaging and particle manipulation. The number of orthogonal OAM modes in a single beam is theoretically infinite and each mode is an element of a complete orthogonal basis that can be employed for multiplexing different signals, thus greatly improving the spectrum efficiency. In this paper, we comprehensively summarize and compare the methods for generation and detection of optical OAM, radio OAM and acoustic OAM. Then, we represent the applications and technical challenges of OAM in communications, including free-space optical communications, optical fiber communications, radio communications and acoustic communications. To complete our survey, we also discuss the state of art of particle manipulation and target imaging with OAM beams

Spatial and wavelength division multiplexing for high-speed VLC systems: An overview

White light emitting diodes (LEDs) are becoming the primary source of illumination for the home and office environment. These LEDs can be intensity modulated to transmit high-speed data via an optical carrier. As a result, there is a paradigm shift in indoor wireless communication as the illumination infrastructure can be reused for data communications. It is widely expected that visible light communication (VLC) system will play a significant role in realizing the high-speed data communication envisaged for 5G connectivity. The goal of VLC systems is to provide a reliable and ubiquitous communication link that is an order of magnitude faster than current radio frequency (RF) links. In order to support the high data rates required for the current and future generations of communication systems, a number of techniques were explored for VLC by a number of research groups worldwide. This paper provides an overview of spatial and wavelength division multiplexing that has enabled multi-Gb/s transmission speeds in VLC using low bandwidth LEDs