Photonic Analog-to-Digital Converters

Photonic analog-to-digital conversion technology is considered a promising option to extend the performance of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) to new levels by eliminating the bottleneck of aperture jitter. In this work, we review some important approaches to photonic ADCs and review recent developments in the field. We consider one particular scheme for photonic ADC conversion which uses optical sampling, wavelength demultiplexing, and electronic digitization; an important advantage of this scheme is that it can be implemented on a silicon chip as an electronic-photonic integrated circuit. We analyze important fundamental and practical limits to ADC performance which can be achieved with this scheme.