A Review of Orbital Angular Momentum Vortex Waves for the Next Generation Wireless Communications

The next-generation wireless technology that can fulfill such a demand, namely the fifth-generation (5G) technology, should provide 1000 times larger capacity. Moreover, sixth-generation (6G) communication, which represents a significant upgrade from the fifth-generation (5G) network and is anticipated to operate from 100 GHz to 3 THz band, will be required in the years after 2030 due to newly developed data-hungry applications and the greatly expanded wireless network. To meet the ever-growing demands of wireless carriers, an efficient wireless access method that can improve wireless area throughput without expanding bandwidth or cell size is required. Radio Frequency (RF) Orbital Angular Momentum vortex waves (which is now on referred to as OAM waves) to address the concerns mentioned above have attracted much attention in recent years. Due to their orthogonality, different OAM waves of different modes can be multiplexed in the same frequency channel, which can greatly increase the channel capacity. Using the orthogonal modes, a new type of multiple access scheme known as Mode Domain Multiple Access (MDMA) can be used by multiple users using the same frequency channel without additional resources such as frequency and time. As a result, the channel capacity for the next generation wireless communication systems can be enhanced as well as the overall spectrum efficiency can be improved. This review paper begins with an overview of the next generation communication such as 5G communication technology and beyond. This paper first briefly discusses the theory of OAM waves and several methods to generate OAM waves. Various different designs have also been analyzed for their ability to generate OAM waves and discussion on several restrictions and solutions to resolve. Open concerns and development trends are discussed for possible future RF OAM antenna upgrades. This study also proposes that for next generation wireless communication employing OAM, the typically used Uniform Circular Array (UCA) could be paired with the Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) system to improve performance in dense or urban areas for multiusers. In addition, the purity of OAM-modes needs to be considered for efficient utilization of the OAM system for future communications at the radio domain.