Characterization parameters for antennas generating orbital angular momentum waves

As one of the pivotal candidate technologies of 6G, orbital angular momentum (OAM) carrying radio waves have attracted much attention in wireless communication and sensing technology fields owing to the particular twisted phase fronts. Various kinds of antennas have been proposed to generate this kind of wave; however, the antenna performance has not been well analyzed in terms of the OAM carrying wave's characteristics. In this paper, some dedicated characterization parameters termed as conjugated receiving pattern, purity related bandwidth, and mode phase linearity based on well-known properties of OAM carrying electromagnetic waves are proposed for the first time. These parameters can be used to characterize the performance of OAM antennas. As an example, the performance of a fabricated helical OAM antenna with a wide bandwidth is characterized by the proposed parameters, which proves the reasonableness and necessity of the proposed characterization parameters. Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.