A Rydberg Atom-Based Receiver With Amplitude Modulation Technique for the Fifth-Generation Millimeter-Wave Wireless Communication

We present a Rydberg atom-based receiver with amplitude modulation (AM) technique for the fifth-generation (5G) millimeter-wave wireless communication in a five-level $\bm {^{85}}$ Rb atomic coherent system. The carrier microwave (C-MW) field at frequency of 24.12 GHz, corresponding to the 5G millimeter-wave wireless communication band, is encoded by AM technique, and then decoded by Rydberg atom-based receiver with the assistance of an auxiliary microwave (A-MW) field. An atomic response to the C-MW field linking to the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of decoded signal, which plays a prerequisite role in 5G millimeter-wave wireless communication with large data transfer capacity, is obtained by investigating the optimal powers of probe laser, coupling laser, and A-MW field. Also, an appropriate AM frequency of 10 kHz, which has an influence on the data transfer capacity, is acquired with 54 dB SNR of decoded signal. Under the abovementioned experimental conditions, the maximum data transfer capacity of 82.5 kbit/s is achieved when the C-MW field power tends to saturate. The bandwidth of Rydberg atom-based receiver is determined as 3.5 GHz, and the instantaneous bandwidth is approximately 106.3 kHz. As a result, 5G signals on three waveforms are transferred with high fidelity, frequency recovery rate, and time synchronization to verify the performance of this receiver for an actual communication. This scheme provides an effective approach for realizing 5G millimeter-wave wireless communication with wide bandwidth, large data transfer capacity, and high fidelity.