Photonic Flash Analog-to-Digital Converter

This proposal describes a new design for a photonic analog-to-digital converter, based on using different wavelengths to encode different voltage levels of an arbitrary input electrical signal. The quantization to electrical bits is accomplished using the flash architecture where many 1-bit comparators are fed in parallel. This design incorporates the key advantages of photonic analog-to-digital conversion, including high-speed low-jitter sampling with a very narrow sampling pulse. The parts of the converter that have a high component count are suitable for monolithic integration, making volume manufacture feasible. It also provides a new simple and accurate method of calibration that avoids some of the problems of earlier photonic designs. In phase I we will demonstrate feasibility, including a 2-bit 10 GS/s experimental version that can be scaled to higher bit depth without sacrificing speed.