Comparison of Laguerre-Gaussian and Donut modes for MDM-WDM in OFDM-Ro-FSO transmission system

Radio-over-free-space-optics (Ro-FSO) technology may pave the way towards a ubiquitous platform for seamless integration of radio and optical networks without expensive optical fiber cabling. In this paper, to increase the capacity of Ro-FSO, mode division multiplexing (MDM) of two modes has been capitalized in a three-channel WDM system spaced by 1 nm over a FSO link of 80 km, resulting in a 120 Gbps six-channel Ro-FSO system. The SNR and received power of MDM of two Laguerre-Gaussian modes LG00 and LG01 is compared with respect to MDM of two transverse donut modes. The performance of four-level quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) of radio subcarriers in the WDM-MDMs system is investigated for mitigation of frequency-selective fading under strong atmospheric turbulence.