Abstract
Orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing has recently received considerable interest in free space optical (FSO) communications. Propagating OAM modes through free space may be subject to atmospheric turbulence (AT) distortions that cause intermodal crosstalk and power disparities between OAM modes. In this paper, we are interested in multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) coherent FSO communication systems using the OAM. We propose a selection criterion for the OAM modes to minimize the impact of the AT. To further improve the obtained performance, we propose a space-time (ST) coding scheme at the transmitter. Through numerical simulations of the error probability, we show that the penalty from AT is completely absorbed for the weak AT regime, and considerable coding gains are obtained in the strong AT regime.