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arXiv · 1903.10644

Detecting and Receiving Phase Modulated Signals with a Rydberg Atom-Based Mixer

Abstract

Recently, we introduced a Rydberg-atom based mixer capable of detecting and measuring the phase of a radio-frequency field through the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and Autler-Townes (AT) effect. The ability to measure phase with this mixer allows for an atom-based receiver to detect digital modulated communication signals. In this paper, we demonstrate detection and reception of digital modulated signals based on various phase-shift keying approaches. We demonstrate Rydberg atom-based digital reception of binary phase-shift keying (BPSK), quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK), and quadrature amplitude (QAM) modulated signals over a 19.626~GHz carrier to transmit and receive a bit stream in cesium vapor. We present measured values of Error Vector Magnitude (EVM, a common communication metric used to assess how accurate a symbol or bit stream is received) as a function of symbol rate for BPSK, QPSK, 16QAM, 32QAM, and 64QAM modulation schemes. These results allow us to discuss the bandwidth of a Rydberg-atom based receiver system.

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Christopher L. Holloway, Matthew T. Simons, Joshua A. Gordon, David Novotny. 2019-03-26. Detecting and Receiving Phase Modulated Signals with a Rydberg Atom-Based Mixer. https://doi.org/10.1109/lawp.2019.2931450

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