Photonic-Based RF Transceiver for UWB Multi-Carrier Wireless Systems

In this paper an all-optical system exploitable as the core structure for a photonic-based RF transceiver is presented. The proposed scheme is able to simultaneously perform either up- or down-conversion of multiple frequency Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) RF signals, employing a single Mode-Locking Laser (MLL). The system has been experimentally demonstrated and tested by up- and down-converting orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals over a bandwidth of about 4 GHz. The scheme’s performance has been validated by measuring the error vector magnitude (EVM) of the OFDM signals over the whole considered RF spectrum (from 5 GHz to 26.5 GHz), both in up-conversion and in down-conversion. The measurements show negligible power penalties, lower than 0.5 dB. Since the proposed scheme can act either as an up- or down-converter, and it is composed by easily integratable devices, two identical structures can be combined on a single integrated platform, sharing a single MLL, to build a compact and efficient UWB transceiver.