ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Phys.
Sec. Optics and Photonics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphy.2025.1581549
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances and Applications of Optical Wireless Communication in Next-Generation NetworksView all 5 articles
Hybrid Optical Communication Systems Leveraging Orbital Angular Momentum Multiplexing: Multi-User Access and Performance Analysis Under Diverse Transmission Scenarios
Provisionally accepted
- 1Chandigarh University, Mohali, Punjab, India
- 2Alexandria Higher Institute of Engineering and Technology, Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt
- 3Jouf University, Sakakah, Saudi Arabia
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
This paper proposes a new hybrid optical communication system integrating Free-Space Optics (FSO) and Single-Mode Fiber (SMF) links, leveraging Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) beam multiplexing to enable multi-user access across diverse geographical and channel conditions. Unlike prior works constrained to homogeneous channels and identical user locations, the proposed system modulates four independent 10 Gbps OOK-NRZ data streams onto distinct OAM beams (ℓ = 0, 15, 40, 70), generated from a single 1550 nm Continuous-Wave (CW) laser. The heterogeneous transmission architecture comprises: Two OAM beams (ℓ = 40, 70) propagating through a clear-weather FSO channel (0.14 dB/km attenuation) and directly received, a third beam (ℓ = 15) transitioning from FSO to SMF, and a fourth beam (ℓ = 0) traversing a cascaded FSO link with a fog-affected secondary channel.System performance is rigorously evaluated using Bit-Error-Rate (BER), Q-factor, and eye diagrams. Results show that direct FSO reception achieves BER<10 -6 over 10 km, while hybrid FSO/SMF transmission (ℓ = 15) maintains BERs of<10 -6 , 10 -4 , and 10 -3 for SMF lengths of 75 km under FSO divergence angles of 0.25 mrad, 0.5 mrad, and 0.25 mrad, respectively (fixed FSO range: 1 km). The fog-impacted cascaded FSO channel (ℓ = 0) sustains BERs of 10 -5.7 , 10 -6.3 , and 10 -5.9 under Low Fog (LF: 9 dB/km), Moderate Fog (MF: 8 dB/km), and Heavy Fog (HF: 27 dB/km), demonstrating resilience in adverse conditions. By unifying OAM multiplexing with hybrid FSO/SMF infrastructure, this work advances scalable and reconfigurable optical networks for heterogeneous users in dynamic environments, with applications in last-mileconnectivity, backbone networks, and disaster-resilient communications.
Keywords: Free space optics, Single mode fiber, Orbital angular momentum multiplexing, Bit error rate, attenuation
Received: 22 Feb 2025; Accepted: 15 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Singh, Abd El-Mottaleb, Alsharari, Aliqab and Armghan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Meshari Alsharari, Jouf University, Sakakah, Saudi Arabia
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.