Multi-Carrier Rydberg Atomic Quantum Receivers with Enhanced Bandwidth Feature for Communication and Sensing

Abstract: Rydberg atomic quantum receivers (RAQRs) have attracted significant attention in recent years due to their ultra-high sensitivity. Although capable of precisely detecting the amplitude and phase of weak signals, conventional RAQRs face inherent limitations in accurately receiving wideband RF signals, due to the discrete nature of atomic energy levels and their intrinsic instantaneous bandwidth constraints. These limitations hinder their direct application to multi-carrier communication and sensing. To address this issue, this paper proposes a multi-carrier Rydberg atomic quantum receiver (MC-RAQR) structure with five energy levels. We derive the amplitude and phase of the MC-RAQR and extract the baseband electrical signal for signal processing. In terms of multi-carrier communication and sensing, we analyze the channel capacity and accuracy of angle of arrival (AoA) and distance parameters, respectively. Numerical results validate our proposed model, showing that the MC-RAQR can achieve up to a bandwidth of 14 MHz, which is 56-fold larger than the conventional RAQRs. As a result, the channel capacity and the resolution for multi-target sensing are improved significantly. Specifically, the channel capacity of MC-RAQR is 22-fold and 3-fold larger than the conventional antennas and RAQRs, respectively. For sensing performance, the MSE of AoA estimation for MC-RAQR is 0.16% of the conventional RAQR and the MSE of distance estimation is 0.01% of the CRB of conventional antennas, showing the superior performance of the MC-RAQR. This demonstrates its compatibility with waveforms such as orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) and its significant advantages for multi-carrier signal reception.