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DWDM Based System for Optical Generation and Transmission of Impulse Radio UWB Signals
Affan Hasan Khan, Omer Khalid, Ateeq Mumtaz, Dr. M. Khawar Islam Faculty of Telecommunications and Information Engineering University of Engineering and Technology, Taxila, Pakistan

Abstract This paper puts forward a simple technique for generation of Impulse Radio Ultra-wideband pulses in optical domain using an optical delay line, optical bias and an optical subtractor. We transmit the data for 32 users across a 1 km optical fiber link using Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing. Moreover, we analyze the relationship between the input data rate and signal bandwidth and also study the effect of pulse width on the bandwidth of a signal. This paper depicts our research and efforts in UWB-over-fiber technology. Index Terms DWDM, Impulse Radio, Differentiator, Ultra-wideband (UWB) over fiber Optical

I INTRODUCTION Ultra-wideband is an up-and-coming technology in wireless communication that has the potential to provide high data rate broadband wireless access. Though it is an emerging technology at present, the concept is not new at all. The history of using UWB for wireless communication goes back to early 1900s when Marconi used UWB pulses in his spark-gap radio transmitter to transmit Morse code sequences. The prominent qualities of UWB attracting attention of researchers from around the globe are its low complexity, low cost, reduced power consumption and increased data rate. The mere limitation of UWB is its short range which can be overcome by the use of Optical Fibers carrying signals from the head-end to user premises. This technology is commonly referred to as UWB-over-fiber. The generation of UWB pulses has always been a challenge because the wide bandwidth requires the signal to be considerably narrow in the time domain. Moreover, to fully exploit the advantages of UWB, there is a need for optical generation of UWB pulses to avoid the use of high cost electrical components required to produce such narrow signals and to exceed the speed limitations offered by the electrical components. Numerous solutions have been proposed in the past demonstrating all-optical generation of UWB pulses. Recent approaches include the use of cross

phase modulation[1], cross-gain modulation in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) [2], intensity modulator to generate polarity switchable UWB pulses [3], LiNbO3 Intensity modulator using the transfer functions wavelength dependant characteristics [4] and the use of Phase Modulator and AMZI to generate UWB pulses [5]. The problem associated with [1] and [2] is that they require two laser sources resulting in increased system complexity. In [3] and [4], the generation is limited to a single UWB pulse which confines the use of this technique to a limited number of applications. Also, the requirement of two wavelengths in [4] renders the system expensive and complicated. [5] requires two Asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometers (AMZIs) to be cascaded which causes the design to face stability issue. In this paper we put forward a technique to generate UWB signals in optical domain and demonstrate a DWDM based distribution mechanism. A Mach-Zehnder modulator is used to intensity modulate electrical Gaussian pulses. An optical delay line followed by a subtractor is used to differentiate the optical Gaussian pulse and thus Ultrawideband monocycle pulses are generated. Owing to the use of optical components only, this technique results in an ultrafast optical pulse source. II. OPERATING PRINCIPLE Figure 1 shows the schematics of the proposed design. The electrical Gaussian pulses are generated from the incoming data by the help of a Gaussian pulse generator. These electrical pulses modulate a Mach-Zehnder modulator and optical Gaussian pulses are produced. The Gaussian pulse can be expressed as: ( )
( )

(1)

Fig. 1: Schematics Diagram of the proposed technique

A. UWB generation principle: Mathematically, the Ultra-wideband monocycle pulse is given by the first order differential of a Gaussian pulse. The width of resultant UWB pulse can be adjusted by manipulating the input Gaussian pulse. In our design, differentiation was performed by splitting the optical Gaussian pulse into two equal components. One component was provided with an optical bias, which lifts this component higher than the peak of the other component. The second component is passed through an optical delay line, delaying the signal in time by an amount equal to the one half of the width of Gaussian pulse. Then, optical subtraction[6][7][8] was used to subtract the later component from the former. In this way, during the time in which elevated component goes through its ascending values, represented by part 1 in figure 2, the delayed component is zero and the subtraction results in nothing but the elevated component itself. Next, during part 2 in figure 2 the subtraction results in the values forming part 5 in the UWB monocycle. And finally, during the part 3 of subtraction, the elevated Gaussian pulse has a constant positive value equal to the value of optical bias provided. Thus the subtraction of the delayed component from this constant positive value results in an inverted copy of the delayed component (part 6) producing UWB pulse in optical domain. Figure 2 shows the working of a differentiator. The elevated and delayed component is shown and formation of UWB monocycle is depicted.

( )

( )

(2)

Fig. 3: Gaussian pulse and its frequency spectrum

Figure 3 shows a Gaussian pulse along with its frequency spectra. Narrower the pulse width in time domain, broader is its frequency spectrum.

Fig. 4: Ultra-wideband monocycle pulse with its frequency spectrum

Figure 4 shows an Ultra-wideband monocycle along with its frequency spectrum. It should be noted that the original Gaussian pulse used was a baseband signal while the UWB pulse generated is a band-pass signal with its frequency spectrum symmetric around a center frequency. Figure 3 and 4 has been plotted using mathematical equations and will be used later to verify the simulation results.

III. SIMULATIONS AND RESULTS The discussed design was simulated at an input data rate of 2Gb/s. The optical delay line used for the differentiation of Gaussian pulses has an inversely proportional relationship with input data rate. Table-1 lists the input data rates corresponding to the optical delay required for proper differentiation. The value of optical delay can be calculated from the data rate and width of the Gaussian pulse. For example, if the input data rate is 2Gb/s, the width of a

Fig. 2: Working of a Differentiator

The equation for UWB monocycle can be deduced from equation (1):

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single bit comes out to be 1/(2*109) = 0.5 ns. So, if the Gaussian pulses are configured to be 0.1 bit wide, the width of the pulses in nanoseconds comes out to be 0.5*0.1 = 0.05 ns. Practically, due to limitations of the Gaussian pulse generator, the actual width is twice this value i.e. 2*0.05 = 0.1 ns. Hence, at a data rate of 2 Gb/s, an optical delay line of 0.05 ns (one half of Gaussian pulse width) is required for proper differentiation. From these calculations we can derive an equation to calculate the value of optical delay line from the data rate and pulse width. ( ) ( ) ( ) For comparison, the simulation has also been performed at a data rate of 1Gb/s. With the data rate reduced to one half, the inverse proportional relationship dictates us to double the optical delay offered. The required optical delay comes out to be 0.05*2 = 0.1ns which can be verified from table. 1. Figure 7 and 8 shows the UWB monocycle produced and the corresponding frequency spectrum respectively, at an input data rate of 1Gb/s.

UWB pulses generated at 2Gb/s and the corresponding frequency spectrum is shown in figure 5 and 6 respectively. The used modulation technique was On-Off keying.
TABLE-1 DATA RATES CORRESPONDING TO THE REQUIRED OPTICAL DELAY

Sr. No. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Data Rate (Gb/s) 0.5 1 2 4

Optical Delay (ns) 0.2 0.1 0.05 0.025

Fig. 7: UWB monocycle generated at 1 Gb/s. (Twice the pulse width at 2 Gb/s)

Fig. 8: Frequency spectrum of UWB monocycle at 1Gb/s. The spectrum is centered at 2 Ghz and has a bandwidth of 3 GHz at -10dbm.

Fig. 5: UWB monocycle generated at 2 Gb/s.

The width of the UWB monocycle in figure 5 is 0.2 ns while it is 0.4 ns in figure 7. These widths are twice the widths of the Gaussian pulses used to generate them. With the data rate reduced to one half, the width of the pulse in time domain in doubled. Intuitively, this should have an effect on the corresponding bandwidths of the pulses as well. From figure 6 and 8 we can derive conclusions that there is a direct proportionality between the input data rate and UWB pulse bandwidth. Doubling the data rate doubles the bandwidth. Figure 9 shows this relationship in the form a graph for two different values of Gaussian pulse width used for UWB monocycle generation.

Fig. 6: Frequency spectrum of UWB monocycle at 2Gb/s. The spectrum is centered at 5 Ghz and has a bandwidth of 6 GHz at -10dbm.

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IV. CONCLUSIONS A simple technique for optical generation of Impulse radio UWB pulses was described along with the mechanism to transmit the data of 32 users over an optical fiber link using Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing. We found that the bandwidth available is directly proportional to the input data rate. Also, we figured out that we can increase the bandwidth by reducing the width of our UWB pulse. The use of all-optical generator for UWB pulses allows to exceed the limitations of electrical components and high data rates can be achieved. REFERENCES
[1] F. Zeng, Q. Wang and J. Yao, All-optical UWB impulse generation based on cross-phase modulation and frequency discrimination, ELECTRONICS LETTERS, 18th January 2007, Vol. 43 No. 2 [2] Wang, Q., Zeng, F., Blais, S., and Yao, J., Optical ultrawideband monocycle pulse generation based on cross-gain modulation in a semiconductor optical amplifier, Opt. Lett., 2006, 31, pp. 30833085 [3 Q. Wang and J. Yao, "UWB doublet generation using nonlinearlybiased electro-optic intensity modulator," Electron. Lett. 42, (2006), 1304-1305 [4] J. Q. Li, S. N. Fu, K. Xu, J. Wu, J. T. Lin, M. Tang, and P. Shum, "Photonic ultrawideband monocycle pulse generation using a single electro-optic modulator," Opt. Lett., vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 288-290, Feb. 2008Opt. Lett. 33, 288 (2008). [5] S. Pan and J. P. Yao: Switchable UWB pulse generation using a phase modulator and a reconfigurable asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer, Opt. Lett. 34, 160 (2009). [6] K. Patorski, Subtraction and addition of optical signals using a double-grating shearing interferometer, Optics Communications Volume 29, Issue 1, April 1979, Pages 13-16 [7] S. J. S. Bradshaw and P. J. C. Child, Optical data addition and subtraction, Optical and Quantum Electronics, Volume 1, Number 1, 4548. [8] Kumshilin, A.A. Raita, E. Silvennoinen, R. Jaaskelainen, T., Optical Subtraction Using Double Phase Conjugate Mirror in a Photorefractive Waveguide, Lasers and Electro-optics Europe, 1996. CLEO/Europe. 7070.

Fig. 9: Relationship between input data rate and bandwidth for two different values of Gaussian pulse width used.

From the graph, it is clear that increasing the width of Gaussian pulse used, reduces the bandwidth of output UWB pulse, while the directly proportional relationship between input data rate and bandwidth stays the same. This is in compliance with the fact that, shorter the pulses in time domain, broader are their frequency spectra. Figure 10 shows the output of Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing. The UWB pulses carrying the data of 32 different users were multiplexed using a frequency spacing of 100 GHz or a wavelength spacing of 0.8 nm.

Fig. 10: 32 Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexed channels

Finally, figure 11 shows the shape of the signal for one user after travelling over a 1 km optical fiber link with an attenuation of 0.2 db/km and dispersion of 16.75 ps/nm/km. The Signal was received using a PIN photo diode.

Fig. 11: Shape of the UWB monocycle received after passing through 1 Km of optical fiber links