Photonically Sampled Direct Wideband Analog to Digital Converter

This SBIR program will develop an analog to digital converter using photonic sampling that is capable of high-resolution direct sampling of all types of radar signals at frequencies from as low as HF to as high as K-band. The enabling technology behind this is photonic sampling. Photonic sampling has extremely low jitter (roughly 3 fs), which is what gives the high performance at high analog input frequency. The electrical input is extremely wideband, so the same photonic system can be used over the full frequency spectrum. The basic principle has already been demonstrated in a preliminary experiment. This SBIR program will develop the photonically sampled analog-to-digital converter into a practical prototype with bandwidth of more than 500 MHz and dynamic range corresponding to greater than 16 bits.