Ultra-high-speed photonic-enabled ADC based on multi-phase interferometry

摘要

A ultra high speed photonic Analog to Digital Converted (ADC) for sampling and quantizing an electrical voltage signal, internally enabled by photonics uses coherent optical detection architectures for photonic quantization. Coherent light is phase modulated by the test signal. Using an interferometer, or an array of interferometers the phase of modulated light is compared with a reference light. Flash ADC, successive approximation ADC and delta-sigma ADC configurations are presented.

主权项

1. An ultra-high-speed optical analog to digital converter comprising: an input for receiving electrical input voltage; at least one laser source for providing a train of equally spaced coherent light pulses; at least one phase modulator for modulating the phase of said light pulses in response to said electrical input voltage to provide phase modulated light pulses; an optical front end comprising at least one optical channel, wherein each optical channel comprises an optical coupler for interfering said phase modulated light pulses with a reference light to create a first and a second interference beams, wherein light intensities in said first and second interference beams depend on relative phase of said phase modulated light pulses and said reference light; at least one optical receiver comprising: a first and a second photodiode for detecting light from said first and a second interference beams to produce a first and a second photocurrents indicative of intensity of said detected light; and an electronic comparator for producing a binary signal indicative of a difference in said first and second photocurrents; and an electronic encoding logic, for creating a multi-bit result from a plurality of said binary signals.