Turbulence compensation of an orbital angular momentum and polarization-multiplexed link using a data-carrying beacon on a separate wavelength

We investigate the sensing of a data-carrying Gaussian beacon on a separate wavelength as a means to provide the information necessary to compensate for the effects of atmospheric turbulence on orbital angular momentum (OAM) and polarization-multiplexed beams in a free-space optical link. The influence of the Gaussian beacon's wavelength on the compensation of the OAM beams at 1560 nm is experimentally studied. It is found that the compensation performance degrades slowly with the increase in the beacon's wavelength offset, in the 1520-1590 nm band, from the OAM beams. Using this scheme, we experimentally demonstrate a 1 Tbit/s OAM and polarization-multiplexed link through emulated dynamic turbulence with a data-carrying beacon at 1550 nm. The experimental results show that the turbulence effects on all 10 data channels, each carrying a 100 Gbit/s signal, are mitigated efficiently, and the power penalties after compensation are below 5.9 dB for all channels. The results of our work might be helpful for the future implementation of a high-capacity OAM, polarization and wavelength-multiplexed free-space optical link that is affected by atmospheric turbulence. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America