Performance of orbital angular momentum based communication systems under varied atmospheric turbulence

Abstract

Orbital Angular Momentum is gaining a lot of attention in the past years as it is providing the means to break free from the ever increasing shortage of options when it comes to Data Rates and Effective Frequency Utilization. OAM promises to break the shackles and provide a solution where a beam which can be transformed into multiple beams within itself and become independent streams of data (pertaining to the principle of orthogonality) to be transferred when properly utilized. in this thesis the generation of these beams is discussed along with how to propagate them through free space and send and receive data. As astonishing as it seems there is a draw back in reality from theory. Free space contains Atmospheric Turbulence which interferes with the beam propagation of OAM and as a result the photons in the light beam are affected as well as the independence of each OAM mode is affected. Accordingly the data stream suffers crosstalk. in this thesis Weak and Strong Atmospheric Turbulences and how they effect a variety of OAM modes as they propagate through free space are studied a comparison between them are provided.