A Picosecond Ultrafast Pulse Generation Featuring Switchable Operation Between Monocycle and Doublet Pulses

This paper presents a picosecond ultrafast electronic pulse generator based on non-linear transmission line, step-recovery diode (SRD) topology, and two different pulse shaping networks to achieve various pulse shapes of interest. The proposed pulse generator has the capability of switching between two fundamental pulse shapes, namely monocycle (1
^st
order gaussian derivative) and doublet pulse (2
^nd
order gaussian derivative). The proposed technique only utilizes a single PIN diode to switch from one pulse shape to the other. The pulse generation is studied in the time domain and the corresponding pulse parameters are presented. The proposed pulse generation can be effectively utilized for different modulation formats, which is appropriate for implementation in UWB transceivers where multiple pulse shapes are required.