Steady information transfer through free-space employing orthogonal aberration mode division multiplexing

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method for free-space optical communication using multiple orthogonal aberration modes encoded with Zernike polynomials, enabling flexible and robust information transfer with a single phase modulator and wavefront sensor.

Contribution

It introduces a novel encoding scheme using Zernike aberration modes for free-space optical communication, allowing multiplexing and external perturbation compensation.

Findings

Successful experimental demonstration of mode multiplexing

High fidelity retrieval of encoded information

Robustness against external perturbations

Abstract

In this paper we propose and experimentally demonstrate information transfer through free-space using a laser beam encoded with multiple orthogonal aberration modes in its phase profile. We use Zernike polynomials which forms a complete set of basis functions to represent the aberration modes. The user information is encoded as amplitudes of multiple Zernike modes whose linear combination is used to define the wavefront of the laser beam in the transmission station. It therefore requires a single phase modulating device since the multiplexing is done digitally providing flexibility over the number and type of modes used. The receiving station uses a wavefront sensor that gives a direct measure of all the aberration modes from a single measurement which is decoded to retrieve the user information. The transmission mechanism enables the use of multiple modes and multiple strengths of each mode to encode the user information and external perturbation compensation, utilizing the completeness of the orthogonal modes.