Structured light based multiuser indoor communications: Exploiting quantum encoding over classical data channel

Abstract

By leveraging the characteristics of both quantum encoding and classical data channel, we present a unique and novel multiuser optical communication system that utilizes fascinating properties of the structured light for information transmission. Specifically, we propose an indoor orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) optical communication system, where the quantum encoding is performed and the multiuser transmission is then analyzed from the context of the classical data channel. In the proposed system, as the OAM beam propagates, its angular spread is analyzed. In addition, we show that the variance of the beam divergence increases with the increasing OAM index mode on the basis of the derived MIMO channel impulse response for OAM carrying Laguerre–Gaussian beams. Comparative studies reveal that the proposed system significantly outperforms the conventional non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) applied with MIMO.