An approach for generating and detecting the signals with the given orbital angular momentum for wireless communication systems

Abstract The paper is devoted to the development of methods for increasing the efficiency of wireless communication channels via the usage of multiplexing by the orbital angular momentum (OAM). This wave property allows us to form an additional basis of orthogonal functions for the simultaneous independent transmission of several signals. In particular, we propose the uniform circular antenna array (UCA) operating in the 77 – 78.5 GHz frequency range designed to generate radio beams with various orders of the OAM without changing its configuration. The important points in the UCA’s design process were ensuring the minimum divergence of the beam during the propagation and obtaining the maximum gain. Regarding the OAM radio beams receiver, we propose a solution for detecting an OAM signal in case of misalignment between transmitting and receiving antennas. An antenna array consisting of two perpendicular dipoles is employed as a receiving device, providing the OAM signal reception from any direction. An important point of signal detection is the preservation of the information about the phase of the received signal. Finally, we demonstrate the simulation results of OAM signal transmission and reception.