High-Sensitivity Rydberg-Atom-Based Phase-Modulation Receiver for Frequency-Division-Multiplexing Communication

Cai, Yafen; Shi, Shuai; Zhou, Yijia; Li, Yitong; Yu, Jianhao; Li, Weibin; Li, Lin

Abstract

Due to the exaggerated properties of highly excited atomic states, a Rydberg-atom-based microwave receiver holds the promise to achieve superior performances in microwave metrology and communication when compared to conventional antennas. However, developing long-distance communication applications based on Rydberg atomic receiver remains challenging, because it requires the simultaneous achievement of low bit error rate (BER), high symbol rate, and weak carrier amplitude. The key to tackle this problem is to encode the information with a proper scheme that maintains high sensitivity and robustness of the Rydberg atomic receiver. Here, we use Rydberg atom-based heterodyne detection for the reception of phase-modulated microwave field, and demonstrate more than one order of magnitude improvement in reception sensitivity compared to the previously investigated amplitude-modulation scheme. Therefore, we achieve low BER communication with high symbol rate of 12 k bit/s and weak carrier amplitude of 13μVcm-1 simultaneously. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that our scheme is compatible with frequency-division-multiplexing communication.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 14, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Apr 25, 2023
• Publication Date: Apr 25, 2023
• Deposit Date: Mar 15, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 25, 2023
• Journal: Physical Review Applied
• Electronic ISSN: 2331-7019
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 19
• Issue: 4
• Article Number: 044079
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.19.044079
• Keywords: Atomic & molecular processes in external fields; Atomic spectra; Optoelectronics; Multiplexers; Rydberg atoms & molecules; Homodyne & heterodyne detection; Microwave techniques
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/18522830
• Publisher URL: https://journals.aps.org/prapplied/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.19.044079