PROJECT TITLE :

Highly Linear Broadband Photonic-Assisted Q-Band ADC

ABSTRACT:

A highly linear broadband photonic-assisted analog-to-digital converter (ADC) primarily based on high-frequency optical sampling utilizing a twin output Mach-Zehnder modulator operating with signal frequencies up to fifty GHz is presented. The pulses used within the optical sampling were generated by a cavity-less pulse source operated at ten GHz in preference to conventional mode-locked lasers. The optical sampling front-end greatly extends the operational frequency vary of the Nyquist limited electronic digitization back-end. The performance of the sampling system is characterized with 7.1 effective number of bits (ENOBs) at forty with 5 GHz absolutely accessible bandwidth, and bigger than 99 dB·Hz2/3 spurious free dynamic range for the 30-forty GHz frequency range. Furthermore, additional than eight ENOB was achieved by reducing the effective bandwidth to 1 GHz with a digital filter, demonstrating the extra advantage of employing a higher sampling rate compared to previous demonstrations. A new figure of benefit of photonic-assisted sub-sampled ADCs is also presented accompanied with a comparison to previous implementations.