Asynchronous photonic A/D converter

This paper presents a hybrid opto-electronic asynchronous delta-sigma modulator, implemented in the form of a fiber-optic Analog-to-Digital converter (ADC). This architecture was chosen for its independence of an external clock and ease of demodulation through a single low-pass filter stage. The fiber-optic prototype consists of an input laser (wavelength λ₁) which is modulated with an input RF signal, a high-speed comparator circuit working as bistable quantizer, and a fiber-optic loop that includes a SOA and a band-pass filter that act as a leaky integrator. The fiber-optic loop acts as a fiber-ring resonator (FRR), and defines the resonance wavelength λ₂ of the system. The gain within this loop is modified through cross-gain modulation (XGM) by the input wavelength λ₁, and thus achieves the desired modulation effect. The proposed architecture has been constructed and characterized at a sampling rate of 15.4 MS/s processing input analog signals in the range of dc-3 MHz with a signal-to-noise ratio of 36 dB and an effective number of bits of 5.7.