Harvesting Planck radiation for free-space optical communications in the long-wave infrared band

We demonstrate a free-space optical communication link with an optical transmitter that harvests naturally occurring Planck radiation from a warm body and modulates the emitted intensity. The transmitter exploits an electro-thermo-optic effect in a multilayer graphene device that electrically contro...

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Veröffentlicht in:Optics letters 2022-12, Vol.47 (23), p.6225-6228
Hauptverfasser: Weinstein, Haley A, Cai, Zhi, Cronin, Stephen B, Habif, Jonathan L
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:We demonstrate a free-space optical communication link with an optical transmitter that harvests naturally occurring Planck radiation from a warm body and modulates the emitted intensity. The transmitter exploits an electro-thermo-optic effect in a multilayer graphene device that electrically controls the surface emissivity of the device resulting in control of the intensity of the emitted Planck radiation. We design an amplitude-modulated optical communication scheme and provide a link budget for communications data rate and range based on our experimental electro-optic characterization of the transmitter. Finally, we present an experimental demonstration achieving error-free communications at 100 bits per second over laboratory scales.
ISSN:0146-9592
1539-4794
DOI:10.1364/OL.476394