Generation of OAM Radio Waves Using Slot
Antenna Array
Dandan Liu, Liangqi Gui, Muhammad Rizwan Akram
National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Muti-Spectral Information Processing
Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, P.R. China
email: guilq@hust.edu.cn
AbstractThis paper discusses a novel and a practical
method to generate radio beams carrying Orbital Angular
Momentum (OAM) by using slot antenna array. Different
modes of OAM waves can be produced by keeping a
constant phase delay between adjacent feed elements. This
slot antenna array is designed and simulated at 7.8 GHz by
using full wave simulator. Moreover, the mutual coupling
between elements will be discussed in this paper.
I. INTRODUCTION
A radio wave can be categorized by spin angular momentum
or orbital angular momentum [1]. SAM, which is related
with field polarization, is greatly employed and it only provides
two modes left hand and right hand circularly polarized wave.
In 1992 [2] Allen et al. discovered Laguerre-Gaussian laser
beam with OAM which brought in a new dimension to
distinguish radio waves. It was found out that waves can carry
another angular momentum known as SAM which possessed
infinite modes. The waves carrying OAM have spiral wave
fronts along the direction of propagation [3] and the modes of
OAM are orthogonal. Therefore, information can be modulated
on these radio waves carrying OAM [4][5][6][7] and can be
differentiated at the receiving terminal. Moreover OAM states
can carry multipath signals at the same frequency band and this
will improve the channel capacity.
The helical wave fronts of four modes of m=0, 1, 2, 3 are
shown in [8]. The wave front is a plane wave when m=0. From
the feature a decision can be reached that when the OAM states
are lager than 0 then the wave fronts are helical ones.
(a) (b) (c) (d)
Fig. 1. Four OAM states: (a) m=0; (b) m=1; (c) m=2; (d) m=3[8].
This work was supported by National Basic Research Program of China(973
Program) 6132670102 and Independent Innovation Foundation of Huazhong
University of Science and Technology with Grant 2014TS097.
Thidet al. firstly realized OAM-carrying radio beams using
antenna array [9]. Thus a new dimension can be employed to
improve the channel capacity of electromagnetic
communication systems. Furthermore, in 2012 it was
practically demonstrated that transmission and reception of
information, which using 2 encoded channels of OAM at the
same frequency, is possible [10]. In this experiment waves
carrying OAM are produced using a spiral paraboloidal antenna.
Then some new methods are discovered to generate OAM
waves as Vivaldi antenna array [11] and patch antenna array
[12]. Circular antenna array can produce OAM and the
theoretical derivation can be learned in [13].
In this paper a slot antenna array fed by 8 phased elements is
presented to generate OAM waves. Moreover, some design
issues and coupling effects will be discussed.
II. ANTENNA STRUCTRUE
A. Single element
Slot antenna, which has advantages of simple structure,
ultra-low side lobe and fields controlled easily, has been
employed to form the circle phased array. This antenna
contains one single metal plate. The length of the slot antenna is
15mm and the width of it is 4mm. The metal plate is designed
with copper, which has 2mm thickness and 45mm radius. Fig. 2
shows the structure of the slot antenna. It can be clearly seen
that the slot antenna works well at 7.9GHz with -10dB
bandwidth from 7 GHz to 8.7 GHz (Fig. 3). The conclusion can
be drawn that the slot antenna is a broadband antenna.
15mm
4mm
Fig. 2. Slot antenna.
 Simulated S 11 III. SIMULATION RESULTS
-2
A three-dimensional (3D) full-wave field simulator based on
-4 Finite integration method (FIT) is used to simulate the slot
antenna array. The slot antenna array can be fed by using
-6 coaxial cable directly or other feeding mechanism [15]. The
simulation model can be seen in Fig. 6.
-8
S /dB
11

-10

-12

-14

-16
6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10
Frequency/GHz

Fig. 3. Simulated S11 of single slot antenna.

Fig. 6. Simulation model of the slot antenna array.

Fig. 7 shows S11-S88 and S11-S18 of slot antenna array. The

wavelength of the antenna array is =39mm. From Fig. 7(a), it
can be seen that the resonant frequencies are shifted about
100MHz from the origin. The worst transmission coefficients
are S12 and S18, which are -18dB at 7.8GHz (Fig. 7(b)).
Therefore, a conclusion can be obtained that the coupling
between elements affects the antenna performance slightly.
Fig. 4. Simulated radiation pattern of the single slot element.

B. Circular array antenna 0

The circular array antenna is shown in Fig. 5. Eight uniform
slots are cut on a(the) circular metal plate in order to get a -5

circular slot antenna array. The radius of the antenna array and
-10
the circular metal plate is r1 and r2, respectively. In order to
Reflection Co-efficients(dB)

minimize the side lobe level r1 is designed as 0.5 [14] and r2 is -15
large enough to contain the slot antennas. S11
-20 S22
S33
-25
S44

-30 S55
S66
-35 S77

r2 S88
r1 -40
6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10
Frequency(GHz)

(a)

Fig. 5. Circular array structure.

 IV. CONCLUSIONS
0
A novel slot antenna array, which is easy to fabricate and use,
-10 is proposed in this paper. This slot antenna array has good
Reflection/Transmisson Co-efficients(dB)

radiant performance and wider bandwidth. More future work,

-20 which includes antenna structure optimization for better output
parameters and fabrication of the antenna array for
-30 S11 measurements, will be addressed in a future publication.
S12
-40 S13 REFERENCES
S14
-50
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-60
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S18
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(a) (b)

(c) (d)
Fig. 8. Electric fields of four modes: (a)m=0, (b)m=1, (c)m=2, (d)m=3.