%0 Journal Article
%A Khilo, A.
%A Spector, S. J.
%A Grein, M. E.
%A Nejadmalayeri, A. H.
%A Holzwarth, C. W.
%A Sander, M. Y.
%A Dahlem, M. S.
%A Peng, M. Y.
%A Geis, M. W.
%A Dilello, N. A.
%A Yoon, J. U.
%A Motamedi, A.
%A Orcutt, J. S.
%A Wang, J. P.
%A Sorace-Agaskar, C. M.
%A Popovi\'c, M. A.
%A Sun, J.
%A Zhou, G.-R.
%A Byun, H.
%A Chen, J.
%A Hoyt, J. L.
%A Smith, H. I.
%A Ram, R. J.
%A Perrott, M.
%A Lyszczarz, T. M.
%A Ippen, E. P.
%A Kärtner, F. X.
%A DESY
%T Photonic ADC: overcoming the bottleneck of electronic jitter
%J Optics express
%V 20
%@ 1094-4087
%C Washington, DC
%I Soc.
%M PHPPUBDB-25804
%P 4454
%D 2012
%X Accurate conversion of wideband multi-GHz analog signals into the digital domain has long been a target of analog-to-digital converter (ADC) developers, driven by applications in radar systems, software radio, medical imaging, and communication systems. Aperture jitter has been a major bottleneck on the way towards higher speeds and better accuracy. Photonic ADCs, which perform sampling using ultra-stable optical pulse trains generated by mode-locked lasers, have been investigated for many years as a promising approach to overcome the jitter problem and bring ADC performance to new levels. This work demonstrates that the photonic approach can deliver on its promise by digitizing a 41 GHz signal with 7.0 effective bits using a photonic ADC built from discrete components. This accuracy corresponds to a timing jitter of 15 fs - a 4-5 times improvement over the performance of the best electronic ADCs which exist today. On the way towards an integrated photonic ADC, a silicon photonic chip with core photonic components was fabricated and used to digitize a 10 GHz signal with 3.5 effective bits. In these experiments, two wavelength channels were implemented, providing the overall sampling rate of 2.1 GSa/s. To show that photonic ADCs with larger channel counts are possible, a dual 20-channel silicon filter bank has been demonstrated.
%F PUB:(DE-HGF)16
%9 Journal Article
%$ pmid:22418205
%U <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000301041900111
%R 10.1364/OE.20.004454
%U https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/144108