Wireless ultra wideband communications using radio over fiber

The existing regulatory limits tends to restrict the wireless range of UWB communications devices to several or tens of meters due to potential interference to existing spectrum users. This paper will introduce radio over fiber (ROF) to extend the range of wireless UWB radio. Existing ROF which uses single mode laser tends to be expensive. In this work, the radio frequency signal of UWB is transmitted over multimode fiber (MMF) using vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) and photo-receiver. This helps to realize a low cost distributed antenna system for both indoor and outdoor applications in UWB communications. Experimental results measured in both time and frequency domain are presented.