This article originally appeared in TV Technology. Earlier this
year I reported “‘Twisted Waves’ Technology Demonstrated in
Venice.” This technology, which uses orbital angular momentum to
encode multiple signals on the same frequency, is being disputed
by electrical engineers who claim the demonstration was really
based on well known MIMO technology. This week BBC News
described the controversy in “‘Twisted Light’ Data-Boosting Idea
Sparks Heated Debate” by science and technology reporter Jason
Palmer. He provided this statement from Bob Nevels of Texas A&M
University: “This would be worth a Nobel prize, if they’re
right. Can you imagine, if all communications could be done on
one frequency? If they’ve got such a great thing, why isn’t
everyone jumping up and down? Because we know it won’t work.”
Nevels is a former president of the IEEE Antennas and
Propagation Society. In a paper in the IEEE Transactions on
Antennas and Propagation, Lund University’s Ove Edfors said what
was going on in Venice was a version