High-speed acoustic communication by multiplexing orbital angular momentum

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1704450114
• Publication Date: 2017-06-27T00:40:30Z
• Authors: Chengzhi Shi; Marc Dubois; Yuan Wang; Xiang Zhang
• Keywords: Underwater acoustic communication; Modulation (music)

Significance Acoustic communication is critical for underwater application such as deep-ocean scientific explorations and off-shore industrial controls. This because other techniques using electromagnetic waves are difficult applications due to the strong absorption of water. Optical communication, on hand, suffers from light scattering, making long-range optical very challenging. Therefore, acoustic transmit information currently dominant technique applications. However, low-frequency bandwidth available limits data transmission rate capacity. We propose experimentally demonstrate an approach orbital angular momentum (OAM) vortex beams, which provides independent channel that enhances rate. OAM multiplexing method will significantly impact future communications.