Spectral line suppression capabilities of spectral line free convolutional codes in UWB over fiber systems

The topic of spectral line suppression is of major importance when designing impulse radio ultrawideband (IR-UWB) systems. The presence of spectral lines in the power spectral density (PSD) may limit the maximum transmission power to comply with UWB regulations, thus, affecting the system performance. Although previous works have shown the advantages of IR-UWB over fiber (UWBoF) implementations, the topic of spectral line suppression in PSD in such systems has not been entirely addressed. This letter proposes a simple IR-UWBoF system using spectral line free (SLF) convolutional codes to address this topic. Experimental results show that the proposed system offers improved PSD characteristics compared to conventional IR-UWBoF implementations. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the proposed system is able to deliver SLF IR-UWB signals over single-mode fibers up to 30 km. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 56:1712–1715, 2014