Summary
A high‐capacity free‐space optics‐based terrestrial communication link using spectral‐efficient space division multiplexing and polarization division multiplexing techniques has been proposed in this research work. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with the use of coherent detection has been proposed for the transmission of quadrature amplitude modulated high‐speed signals. Eight independent 50‐Gbit/s data streams are transported by two orthogonal polarization states (X and Y) of four distinct Hermite–Gaussian spatial modes to increase the transmission rate of the link to 400 Gbit/s over a single channel. Through numerical simulations, we report feasible transportation of 400‐Gbit/s information at 10 km under clear weather with faithful performance. Further, the impact of atmospheric scintillation and fog weather has been evaluated using simulations. The results report that the maximum range reduces to 6 km under clear weather in the presence of strong atmospheric scintillation. Moreover, the maximum range of 2000, 1700, and 1300 m is reported for light, moderate, and heavy fog conditions respectively.