Widely-Tunable and Background-Free Ultra-Wideband Signals Generation Utilizing Polarization Modulation-Based Optical Switch

A simple widely-tunable and background-free ultra-wideband (UWB) pulse shaper by utilizing the polarization modulation-based optical switch is proposed and demonstrated. By virtue of the excellent switch isolation and the complementarity between two inverted baseband signals output from the optical switch, the local oscillator leakage signal and the low frequency components of the obtained UWB signals are suppressed very well. The UWB pulse with center frequency up to 28 GHz is generated.