The Limits of Effective Degrees of Freedom in UCA based Orbital Angular Momentum Multiplexed Communications

Abstract

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing technique has recently emerged and generated widespread interests since the OAM was discovered as a property of electromagnetic wave and acoustic wave. It was widely acknowledged that OAM multiplexing can achieve very high effective degrees of freedom (EDOF) and improve the spectral efficiency in optical, radio and acoustic communications. However, in the field of free-space optical (FSO) communications, it was demonstrated that OAM multiplexing is not the optimal multiplexing technique and the spatial bandwidth product (SBP) limits the EDOF. Is there any EDOF limits of OAM multiplexing in radio and acoustic communications? Could OAM multiplexing be safely scaled to far field? Here, we discover that the azimuthal resolution of OAM mode generator in OAM multiplexing limits its EDOF. Furthermore, we also verify that the OAM multiplexing in radio and acoustic communication fails to enable a long distance transmission and high EDOF simultaneously incurred by the inherently imperfect OAM mode generator.