Photonic generation and envelope detection of millimeter-wave ultra-wideband impulse-radio employing Mach-Zehnder modulators

The photonic generation of millimeter-wave impulse-radio ultra-wideband (UWB) signals is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Impulse-radio UWB monocycles at 16.85 GHz with 5 GHz bandwidth and bearing data at 1.244 Gbit/s are generated. The frequency up-conversion is performed by a Mach-Zehnder electro-optical modulator (MZM) and the monocycle shaping is achieved after photodetection based on an amplifier with polarity-inverted outputs and further delay. The technique is suitable for simultaneous vehicular short-range radar and communications in the 24 GHz band and communications in other bands. Adequate photonic reception stage employing a MZM is also proposed and demonstrated achieving good quality.