Harvesting Planck radiation for free-space optical communications in the LWIR band

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel free-space optical communication system that uses a graphene-based device to harvest and modulate Planck radiation from a warm body in the LWIR band, enabling error-free data transmission.

Contribution

It introduces a graphene-based electro-thermo-optic transmitter that harvests natural Planck radiation and modulates its intensity for free-space optical communication in the LWIR band.

Findings

Achieved error-free communication at 100 bps in laboratory conditions.

Demonstrated control of emitted radiation intensity via electro-thermo-optic effect.

Provided a link budget analysis for data rate and range.

Abstract

We demonstrate a free-space optical communication link with an optical transmitter that harvests naturally occurring Planck radiation from a warm body and modulates the emitted intensity. The transmitter exploits an electro-thermo-optic effect in a multilayer graphene device that electrically controls the surface emissivity of the device resulting in control of the intensity of the emitted Planck radiation. We design an amplitude-modulated optical communication scheme and provide a link budget for communications data rate and range based on our experimental electro-optic characterization of the transmitter. Finally, we present an experimental demonstration achieving error-free communications at 100 bits per second over laboratory scales.