We present the first demonstration of a wireless transmission link based on uni-travelling carrier photodiodes (UTC-PDs) as transmitter and receiver. In this demonstration, a UTC-PD was used at the transmitter to generate a 1 Gbps on-off keying (OOK) data signal at a carrier frequency of 61.3 GHz by heterodyning two modulated optical tones originating from an optical frequency comb (OFC) system. The generated electrical heterodyne signal was transmitted, using a 25 dBi gain parabolic antenna. An identical antenna was used to detect the signal at the receiver, followed by an optically pumped UTC-PD mixer to down-convert the received RF signal to an intermediate frequency (IF) of 6.3 GHz, which, was subsequently amplified and acquired by a real-time oscilloscope (RTO) for offline processing. The recovered data showed an open eye diagram, and a bit error rate (BER) of the order of 10â5â was measured. The receiver UTC-PD was characterized in terms of its conversion loss and noise figure (NF), and the overall NF of the receiver was measured at 21.5 dB
