A/D conversion method and apparatus

摘要

An opto-electronic A/D converter includes a tunable laser (10) for wavelength modulating a narrowband coherent electromagnetic beam by the amplitude of the analog signal. A grating (12) transforms the wavelength modulated beam into a corresponding angularly modulated beam. A set of kinoforms (14) diffract the angularly modulated beam into a bundle of diffracted beams. Detectors (18, 20) determine the digital signal by repeatedly sampling the spatial power distribution of the diffracted beams.