Multi-band impulse filtered UWB signal transmission by wideband optical VCSEL transmitter

Gbor Fehr, Csaba Fzy, Attila Zlomy, Tibor Berceli

Department of Broadband Infocommunication and Electromagnetic Theory Budapest University of Technology and Economics Budapest, Hungary [feher,fuzy,zolomy,berceli]@mht.bme.hu
Abstract This paper introduces a novel approach for transmitting UWB signals over optical fibre with cost effective Vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL). The transmitted impulse compile with the strict European frequency plan (ECC). A prototype filter is presented with lumped elements which has a -40 dB/500 MHz cut off at the critical 3.1 GHz band. Also a novel impedance matching method is presented for matching low cost 850 nm multi-mode VCSEL in the lower UWB band. Timedomain transmission measurements are presented with the fabricated devices that show this approach is acceptable for low cost remote antenna connection for UWB applications. Ultra Wide Band; Impulse Radio; Notch filter; Broadband Matching; VCSEL; Radio Over Fibre (ROF)

I.

INTRODUCTION

Figure 1.

The generated (red line) and the filtered (blue line) impulse PSD with the ECC UWB window (green line)

Ultra Wide Band (UWB) is a new technology, which has been recently introduced for wireless communication systems. The UWB signal is defined as an arbitrary signal, which occupies a bandwidth larger than 500 MHz, or has a fractional bandwidth greater than 20%. Due to its large frequency bandwidth, the time resolution at signal detection can be extremely fine and the effect of multipath fading is less. These provide good potential for low duty cycle applications like ranging and positioning. In 2006 European Frequency Authority (ECC) started to adopt UWB in its frequency plan. [1] After the first decision number of critics claimed about the strict limitations of the plan. Although the frequency band usable on a long term is the 6-9 GHz (upper UWB) band according to ECC, the revision of the 2006 ECC decision [2] made the 3.1 - 4.8 GHz (lower UWB) band available to low duty cycle (LDC) devices equipped with detect and avoid (DAA) techniques. II. OBJECTIVE

larger areas (ie. a building). To overcome this problem we can extend the range of a complex mains powered impulse radio node with a multiple input/output antenna system design, where antennas are connected through optical fibre. With other words the detectors receive the RF UWB signals from the mobile units using a single UWB chip antenna. After that, the pulses will be transmitted over optical fibre as a special ROF [3] application. In this paper first the impulse generation technique is presented. Second, a novel approach is shown for meeting the ECC spectral requirements. Third, a VCSEL driver network based on broadband impedance matching is presented and finally the simulated and measured results are compared. III. IMPULSE GENERATION

The main concept of our research is to provide acceptable radio frequency front end for UWB impulse based radio applications. ECC frequency plan makes many restrictions to lower UWB band, however using this band has some benefits, as penetration properties are better, and in most cases thanks to DAA the -41.3 dB maximum Power Spectral Density (PSD) can be used in this lower band too. DAA's drawback that radio devices will be more complex and more expensive and PSD is still too low, thus many of these devices are needed to cover

UWB signal generation can be divided into two main groups, such as the continuous wave and the baseband modulations. For low duty cycle low power devices an impulse radio (IR) that uses high bandwidth analogue pulses to carry information has numerous advantages over conventional narrow-band or wide-band signals. [4,5] Various methods exist for pulse generation. The signal can be synthesized with wide band mixers, but the easy way is generating the signal directly. Direct signal generation can be achieved with high speed integrated circuits or with active elements. The breakdown effect of the avalanche transistor, and the reverse current of the step recovery diode (SRD) can be

used for pulse generation. The pulse shape generated with these non-linear elements can be modelled by a Gaussian pulse. It is well known that Gaussian pulses have a wide frequency bandwidth so additional filtering is needed to meet the spectral requirements. A 2nd order SRD based Gaussian pulse generator has been developed with short circuited stub pulse shaping [5]. With this method the pulse generator has been optimized for maximum PSD at 4 GHz (red line in Figure 1.). IV. THE HARMONIC TRAP BASED FILTER Figure 2.

Although the pulse generator has a maximum PSD at 4 GHz the spectral bandwidth of the generated pulse is well above the ECC limit. However commercial ceramic filters exist for the lower UWB band they usually have a maximum 25dB/500MHz cut-off thus not acceptable for impulse filtering regarding to the ECC spectral mask. To make real sharp cut off, a harmonic resonator trap can be used. [7] The cut off sharpness of the LC resonator is a function of the resonator quality factor. To make a harmonic trap a series LC resonator has been used. By defining the quality factor and the resonant frequency an arbitrary notch can be achieved. In order to suppress the lower frequency range two series capacitors were added so the harmonic trap was extracted to a symmetrical T section where the LC resonator is grounded. Through the realization it has been discovered that concatenating the traps with narrow transmission line flattens the passband between the traps (Figure 2.). It is partly because, its inductive effect with the series capacitor acts as a series resonator. After optimizing this connection the filtered impulse spectral properties achieved the ECC regulations. The pulse energy only remains in the two permitted bands of the ECC spectral mask. The realized trap has a 1 to 3 dB attenuation at the passband. This is mainly because of the used lumped elements poor quality factor. When talking about baseband impulse radio, the group delay of the filter is critical. Measurements show that group delay varies an acceptable 300 ps in the passband. The spectra of the filtered impulse is shown in Figure 1. V. BROADBAND IMPEDANCE MATCHING

The simulated (dashed blue line) and the measured (red line) S21 parameter and the schematic of the muti-band filter

Figure 3.

The impedance classification

versus the bias current, so we presume the small signal equivalent circuit is well applicable for further analysis. Narrow band impedance matching using lumped and distributed components is well known in the literature[9]. The difficult problem is about the design and realization of the complex impedance matching network in wide band. There are two relevant methods: The first one is the analytical broadband complex impedance matching, which is based on the double terminated filter theory [10]. This method's main advantage is the well programmable iterative design equations. However, the main disadvantage is that, due to the double terminated filter theory, the impedance to be matched must be a possible continuation of a lowpass or a bandpass filter network. This process is the impedance classification, when the proper equivalent circuit is to be determined. The second is the real frequency technique, where there is no need to classify the impedance to be matched, because this method is based on an optimization algorithm. In contrast of this advantage the mathematical background and the implementation of the algorithm is really difficult [11]. In order to analyse a novel laser diode driver network the analytical matching theory was taken into consideration. The first step is approximating the laser diode's input impedance in the desired frequency range f1 = 3.1 GHz .. f2 = 4.8 GHz. The input impedance was measured with a HP Vectorial Network Analyser(VNA). In Figure 3. the measured data are exhibited by the blue curve and the estimating series R-L impedance with the red

The laser diode driver circuit's main goal is to maximize the transducer power, i.e. the delivered power from the amplifier to the laser diode. In this case the overall problem is to match the laser diode's input impedance to the amplifier's output impedance. By other words, it is necessary to design a two port circuit, which transforms the laser diode's frequency dependent complex input impedance into the amplifier's 50 ohm output impedance in a wide frequency range. It is well known that a laser diode should be fed by a current generator like supply. Depending on the input signal peak current value to chosen bias point ratio, we can talk about small or large signal diode driving. However it is really hard to find a non-linear large signal equivalent circuit for the chosen laser diode (HFE4192). Measurements has shown that in our case the diode's input impedance does not change largely

curve in a common Smith-Chart using the Microwave Office CAD program (MWO). The element values were determined using an optimiser, which minimized the complex difference function between the measured and approximating curves. As a result the element values of the series R-L section : 55.5 ohm 3.04 nH. The lowpass prototype filter values can be determined based on the analytical impedance matching theory design equations [10,12,13]. Having determined the mentioned values, a lumped element impedance matching network can be derived based on the well known filter design techniques, namely the scaling transformations and the lowpass to bandpass transformations [10,12]. In the case of lumped element matching network there are two serious problems. First, the generator terminating resistance is determined by the design equations. This is due to the double terminated filter network, which is based on the analytical matching theory. The previously mentioned problem in specific cases can be compensated using the total or partial Norton transform [13]. Second is the matching network's high sensitivity to the relatively small change in the element values. The yield analysis was done with MWO. Instead of using the equivalent circuits of the lumped elements, the measured Sparameters were used from the web library. Due to the high sensitivity the lumped element network is not well applicable. That is why the chosen topology is microstrip distributed element network. The microstrip network design is mainly based on the microwave resonator-inverter filter theory. Due to the freedom of the inverter's value it is possible to choose arbitrarily the generator load impedance [11,13]. Applying the lowpass prototype matching network and the design equations in ref [9] the microstrip matching network can be designed. Obviously the remaining problem is the modelling of the secondary and parasitic effects of the microstrip discontinuities such as the Tjunctions, stepped or tapered line widths, SMA connector's coaxial to microstrip quasi-TEM transitions, etc. In addition the DC bias is a remaining problem, because the perfect RF choke network should produce a reflection with a magnitude 1 and a phase of 0 degree in a wide band. Such a network is really hard to develop using a distributed element network as well as with lumped elements. The chosen method is the commonly used quarter-wavelength high impedance line terminated with a quarter-wavelength open terminated stub. The fabricated circuit can be seen in Figure 5. The measured input reflection as a function of the frequency can be seen in Figure 4. The red line shows the 2 mA and the blue line shows the 8 mA bias point. As it can be observed, both bias points have reflection under under the value of -10 dB in the f1 = 2.5 GHz .. f2 = 5 GHz band. By other words the 90% of the input power is absorbed by the laser diode, which is a very good result. VI. THE MEASUREMENT SETUP

Figure 4.

The measured input reflection

Figure 5.

The matching network

Figure 6.

The measurement setup

oscilloscope (DSO) has 20 GSPS sampling frequency but the analogue input bandwidth is 2.5 GHz. To get the signal in time domain we had the mix down the bandpass filtered impulse. The mixed used a 3 GHz local oscillator that was not synchronized to the impulse repetition frequency, so maximum and minimum pulse peak vary as the phase difference between the pulse and the local oscillator vary. The trigger level of the DSO has been set to the maximum occurent pulse peak, so we can presume we measure the same pulse before and after the optical link. The other limitation was the lack of a reference detector for 850 nm wavelength light. Thus Picometrix AD-300 (4001700nm) detector frequency response was characterized with a HP 83422A Mach-Zehnder modulator. The electro-optical and optical-electro conversion gave a 26 dB attenuation (this has been added to the receiver amplifier gain in the simulation), and the detector had an additional 15-25dB attenuation in the lower UWB band. The receiver attenuation was compensated with a 15dB amplifier (AD5541) placed after the receiver. The measurement setup is shown in Figure 6. The simulation results are presented in Figure 6. The first red impulse is the generated pulse by the above described pulse

To verify the bandpass filter and the optical transmitter with measurements, we had to overcome some limitations of the measuring devices. The used (Agilent 5453A) digital

generator. The brown pulse is the multi-band filtered pulse. The blue pulse at the right is the pulse that we can see if downconverting the filtered pulse. The green pulse is the filtered pulse after transmitting through the above mentioned HP83422A AD-300 optical channel. The green pulse peak was at 20mV so we normalized it to the blue pulse peak to see the time-domain characteristics. In Figure 8. the measurement results are shown. The above mentioned blue and green pulses had the same peak values as in the simulations, and the time-domain characteristics are well correlated. However there are some distortions at the negative pulse peaks, this is due to the high modulation depth caused non-linearities. We had to use almost 100% modulation depth at 8mV biased VCSEL, to get acceptable signal/noise ratios. As positive pulse peak have same values in the simulation and in the measurement, and the time-domain characteristics at the input and the output pulse are the same, we can clearly say, that the designed VCSEL based optical transmitter is capable of transmitting lower UWB band pulses without additional distortion. If high modulation depth and receiver side additional amplification is acceptable, low cost digital communication optimized detectors are usable for UWB impulse over fibre communications. VII. CONCLUSION This paper answers two main design problems regarding the lower UWB band impulse radio using optical fibre antenna connection. A novel high cut off multi band UWB filter has been presented. The lumped element version only consists of 9 capacitors and 3 inductors. However this has 1-3 dB loss in passband it has an advantage in low PCB occupation. Measurement results show, using this filter an SRD based impulse generator can compile with the strict ECC rules. Considering the optical connection a novel method for VCSEL driving has been presented. The complex wideband impedance matching network maximized the useful power absorbed by the VCSEL. Applying the broadband matching theory for this VCSEL product, the laser diode circuit's efficiency was enhanced, because the reflected power is minimized by the matching circuit. Measurements show that VCSEL based optical transmitter is capable of transmitting lower UWB band pulses without additional distortion. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors acknowledge the Hungarian National Research Foundation (OTKA) project No. CNK 77564 and the Ericsson Hungary Co. for funding their research. The authors also acknowledge the valuable support and advises received from Eszter Udvary.
[1]

Figure 7.

The simulation results (left axis in Volt for first two pulses right axis in Volt for the second two pulses)

Figure 8.

The measured impulse before and after transmission

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