Abstract

Conversion of analog signals into digital signals is one of the most important functionalities in modern signal processing systems. As the signal frequency increases beyond 10 GHz, the timing jitter from electronic clocks, currently limited at ~100 fs, compromises the achievable resolution of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). Owing to their ultralow timing jitter, the use of optical pulse trains from passively mode-locked lasers has been considered to be a promising way for sampling electronic signals. In this paper, based on sub-10 fs jitter optical sampling pulse trains, we demonstrate a photonic subsampling ADC that downconverts and digitizes a narrowband microwave signal at 40 GHz carrier frequency with higher than 7 effective-number-of-bit (ENOB) resolution.

© 2008 Optical Society of America

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History
Original Manuscript: September 2, 2008
Manuscript Accepted: September 26, 2008
Revised Manuscript: September 26, 2008
Published: October 1, 2008

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Author Affiliations

Jungwon Kim, Matthew J. Park, Michael H. Perrott, Franz X. Kärtner

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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