Recent progress on RF orbital angular momentum antennas

Abstract

In the last five years or so, there has been a great interest in RF OAM to address the contradiction between the lack of wireless spectrum resources and the continually growing demands of the bandwidth. Recent developments and technological advancements in antenna design, material science, and integrated circuits have enabled miniaturized, multiple modes, tunable in radio frequency (RF) orbital angular momentum (OAM) antenna designs. From conventional methods such as spiral phase plate and reflector antenna to antenna array and metasurface, the working principle and structures are introduced. To improve the performance of RF OAM antennas, several innovative physical concepts have been explored for the designs of RF OAM antenna designs. In this paper, we present an up-to-date survey on the development of RF OAM antenna technologies. Open issues and development trends are explored as a source of inspiration towards the future better outcome of RF OAM antenna designs.

Keywords:

• Orbital angular momentum
• radio frequency
• antenna

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Jianchun Xu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2094-3220

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China: [grant numbers 51972033, 61774020, 51788104, 51802023, 61690195, 61675103, 61671085, 61605015, 61575028, 51532004, and 51802021]; the Science and Technology Plan of Shenzhen City: [grant number JCYJ20180306173235924]; Key area research plan of Guangdong: [grant number 2019B010937001].

Notes on contributors

Jianchun Xu

Jianchun Xu received the B.Sc. degree in Measurement and Control Technology and Instrumentation Program from the Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, in 2014. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. with the Department of School of Science at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in Beijing, China. His research interests include orbital angular momentum, antenna design, and metasurface.

Yaxian Guo

Yaxian Guo received the B.Sc. degree in physics from Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China, in 2018. She is now pursuing her M.Sc. degree at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in Beijing, China. Her research interests include orbital angular momentum and metasurface.

Puyu Yang

Puyu Yang received a B.S degree in communication engineering from Shandong University, Shandong, China, in 2017. He is currently pursuing his Master's degree with the Department of School of Science at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in Beijing, China. His research interests include data analysis, complex network and computational communications.

Ru Zhang

Ru Zhang received the Ph.D. degree in physics from Sichuan University, Chengdu, in 1997. She is currently a Professor at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing.

Xiaojun Zhai

Xiaojun Zhai received the B.Sc. degree from the North China University of Technology, China, in 2006, and the M.Sc. degree in embedded intelligent systems and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Hertfordshire, U.K., in 2009 and 2013, respectively. He is currently a Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at the University of Essex. His research interests mainly include the design and implementation of the digital image and signal processing algorithms, custom computing using FPGAs, embedded systems and hardware/software co-design. He is a BCS member and HEA Fellow.

Shanguo Huang

Shanguo Huang (M’09) received the Ph.D. degree from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), Beijing, China, in 2006. He is currently a Professor with the State Key Laboratory of Information Photonics and Optical Communications, BUPT. He has been actively undertaking several national projects, authored three books and over 150 journals and refereed conferences, and authorized 18 patents. He was a recipient of the Beijing Higher Education Young Elite Teacher, the Beijing Nova Program, the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University from the Ministry of Education, from 2011 to 2013, and the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars, in 2016. His current research interests include the networks designing, planning, the traffic control, and resource allocations, especially network routing algorithms and performance analysis.

Ke Bi

Ke Bi received the Ph.D. degree from the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, in 2012. From 2012 to 2014, he was an Assistant Researcher with Tsinghua University. He is currently an Associate Professor with the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. His research interests include information functional materials and devices, and electromagnetic metamaterials and devices.