High-Bandwidth, Analogue-to-Digital Conversion for THz Communication Systems

Abstract

AbstractTerahertz wireless communication with its immanent wide bandwidth is seen as one of the potential solutions for ultra-high-speed resilient communication systems. One of the major challenges in THz systems, however, is high-bandwidth signal processing and especially analogue-to-digital conversion. Although electronic converters have recently reached very high bandwidths, the decrease in Moore’s law future scaling advances makes it mandatory to look for alternatives. Electronic and photonic combination for high-speed signal processing on a single integrated platform might enable ultra-high bandwidth and cost-effective processing units for next-generation THz wireless systems. In this chapter, we will demonstrate all-optical sampling by Nyquist pulses. These pulses are fully reconfigurable and simple to control by tuning external RF signals without using any optical tuning. Therefore, the pulses can precisely be adapted to the sampling requirements. The method offers sampling rates with three to four times the radio frequency of the used modulators. Even higher sampling rates are obtained with existing low-bandwidth electronics by spectral or time-interleaving.KeywordsSamplingNyquist pulsesPhotonic samplingIntegrated photonic samplerElectronic-photonic IC (ePIC)