Dual-output modulation in time-wavelength interleaved photonic analog-to-digital converter based on actively mode-locked laser

Abstract

This Letter demonstrates the application of dual-output modulation in a photonic analog-to-digital converter (PADC) with a high sampling rate and resolution. The PADC is time-wavelength interleaved and based on an actively mode-locked laser. According to theoretical analysis, the dual-output PADC system shows a better linearity for achieving a higher dynamic range. In the experiment, third-order distortion is significantly suppressed by ～40 dB when the dual-output modulator is used and the effective number of bits of the PADC has reached 9.0 bits below 0.2 GHz and 6.4 bits at 6.1 GHz in our PADC with a sampling rate of 20 GS/s.