This paper introduces a 400 Gbps free space optics (FSO) system to meet the expected surge in the demand for data traffic. The proposed system is based on using 4-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4) signals in addition to polarization division multiplexing and orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing schemes. To reduce spectrum usage, only a single wavelength of 1550 nm is used. A 400 Gbps is transmitted over two polarization states and eight OAM beams. The signal on each polarization carries the data of four different OAM beams ( \({LG}_{0}^{0}\) , \({LG}_{15}^{0}\) , \({LG}_{40}^{0}\) , and \({LG}_{80}^{0}\) ). The performance of the proposed model is examined under the influence of light haze, medium haze, heavy haze, low fog, medium fog, heavy fog, wet Snowfall, dry snowfall, light dust storms, medium dust storms, and heavy dust storms. The maximum transmission range and the Bit Error Rate (BER) are used for evaluating the system performance. The simulation results reported the longest FSO link with ranges from 800 to 1475 m under haze conditions. A slight decrease in these ranges is achieved under fog conditions (ranges from 450 to 859 m). The FSO highest attenuation is experienced for HDS case, which results in the shortest range of 73 m. These ranges are calculated at BER Forward Error Correction limit of 3.8 × 10–3. Subsequently, the proposed system can be used for the next 6G applications due to its simplicity in design and high transmission capacity.
