An Approach to All-Optical UWB Pulse Generation

A novel approach is proposed to generating UltraWideBand (UWB) pulse signals in the optical domain. Pulsed light is wavelength-converted to phase-modulated light via cross-phase modulation in a nonlinear fiber, to which a CW probe light is also applied. A fiber Brag grating that serves as a frequency discriminator is connected at the output of the nonlinear fiber. By reflecting the phase-modulated light at the slopes of the FBG electrical monocycle or doublet pulses are obtained at the output of a photodetector. The use of the proposed configuration to implement pulse on-off, polarity and shape modulation in the optical domain is discussed, which provides the potential for fully exploiting the advantages provided by UWB-over-fiber networks