An optical realization of a 500 Mb/s UWB transceiver

We propose and demonstrate experimentally a prototype for an all-optical ultra-wideband (UWB) transceiver at 500 Mb/s. We first generate an optimized UWB pulse that is adapted to the transmitter RF front end and the FCC spectral mask using spectral pulse shaping and frequency-to-time conversion. We then introduce simple optical signal processing at the receiver that allows the incoming RF signal to be matched against a square pulse whose duration is tailored to the channel. Using our optimized pulse and approximate match filter receiver, we attain 10^-6 bit error rate at 500 Mbs, with 65 cm separation using simple on-off keying and no forward error correction.