Photonic ADC: overcoming the bottleneck of electronic jitter

Khilo, A.; Kärtner, F. X.; Zhou, G.-R.; Holzwarth, C. W.; Smith, H. I.; Spector, S. J.; Sun, J.; Dahlem, M. S.; Sorace-Agaskar, C. M.; Sander, M. Y.; Chen, J.; Yoon, J. U.; Grein, M. E.; Perrott, M.; Ippen, E. P.; Ram, R. J.; Lyszczarz, T. M.; Geis, M. W.; Byun, H.; Wang, J. P.; Motamedi, A.; Nejadmalayeri, A. H.; Peng, M. Y.; Hoyt, J. L.; Orcutt, J. S.; Popovi\'c, M. A.; Dilello, N. A.

doi:10.1364/OE.20.004454

Journal Article

Photonic ADC: overcoming the bottleneck of electronic jitter

Khilo, A. ; Spector, S. J. ; Grein, M. E. ; Nejadmalayeri, A. H. ; Holzwarth, C. W. ; Sander, M. Y. ; Dahlem, M. S. ; Peng, M. Y. ; Geis, M. W. ; Dilello, N. A. ; Yoon, J. U. ; Motamedi, A. ; Orcutt, J. S. ; Wang, J. P. ; Sorace-Agaskar, C. M. ; Popovi\'c, M. A. ; Sun, J. ; Zhou, G.-R. ; Byun, H. ; Chen, J. ; Hoyt, J. L. ; Smith, H. I. ; Ram, R. J. ; Perrott, M. ; Lyszczarz, T. M. ; Ippen, E. P. ; Kärtner, F. X. ; DESY

2012
Soc. Washington, DC

Optics express 20, 4454 (2012) [10.1364/OE.20.004454]

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Please use a persistent id in citations: doi:10.1364/OE.20.004454

Abstract: 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.

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