Fiber-optic analog-to-NRZ binary conversion

Abstract

A novel photonic analog-to-binary converter based on the first-order asynchronous delta-sigma modulation (ADSM) has been theoretically investigated and experimentally demonstrated. A fiber-optic prototype ADSM system is constructed and characterized. Delta-sigma modulation is a straightforward approach to A/D conversion because in this case an external clocking is not required and demodulation can be simply performed via a low-pass filtering process. To improve signal-to-noise ratio and thus system ENOB, a non-interferometric optical implementation has been constructed. The ADSM is comprised of three photonic devices: an inverted output photonic leaky integrator, bistable quantizer, and positive corrective feedback. The photonic integrator which is a recirculating loop performs the oversampling of an analog input using the cross-gain modulation in an SOA. We will show that the photonic ADSM produces an inverted non-return-to-zero (NRZ) pulse-density modulated output describing an input analog signal. This fiber-optic ADSM converts up to 7.6 MHz analog input at about 30 MS/s and effective ENOB of 6.