Research on the Purity of Orbital Angular Momentum Beam Generated by Imperfect Uniform Circular Array

Abstract

As a pathbreaking approach to generate orbital angular momentum (OAM) beam, uniform circular array (UCA) has been extensively researched and applied. However, the impact of the imperfect UCA (IUCA) converted from a UCA with the position of antenna elements on the purity of the generated OAM beam is rarely considered. In order to verify the effect of position deviation on the OAM beam, this letter deduces the analysis model of the IUCA and the OAM mode purity model. The OAM mode purity refers to the weight of the intensity of the “expected OAM mode.” Numerical simulation results show that the OAM beam generated by IUCA is a superposition of OAM beams with a series of different modes, and this results in a certain OAM beam received being contaminated. Compared with the radius deviation, the azimuth deviation of antenna elements has more obvious influence on the OAM mode purity. Moreover, low-mode OAM beams are more suitable for long-distance transmission. Properly increasing the antenna array radius can improve the purity of high-order OAM modes.