The Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) Multiplexing Controversy: OAM as a subset of MIMO

Recently the orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing scheme has been proposed to increase supposedly without limit the channel capacity between a transmitter and a receiver nodes communicating in line of sight. A controversy arose about the far-field effectiveness of this method and about it being or not a subset of MIMO communication schemes. In this contribution we first illustrate that OAM multiplexing can be completely understood as line of sight MIMO, and hence that the technique cannot bring additional advantages in far-field communications. Secondly, we show that it is possible to build similar line of sight near field MIMO systems based on lenses which perform better than their OAM counterparts.