The working model of ultraviolet (UV) optical communication transceiver is studied. The transceiver response time (TRT) parameter is defined to evaluate the handover efficiency of transceiver. A highly sensitive broadband receiver is designed and developed to measure this parameter. The experimental results show that the TRT of UV communication transceiver is about 100 ms, and the repeatability is less than 1 ms. The results can provide significant data for the research on UV communication.