Optical time-domain mixer

Abstract

We simulate an optical time-domain mixer that can be used to make a photonic analog-to-digital converter (ADC) or a digital demodulator for high-speed optical communications signals. In the basic mixer, a high frequency RF signal modulates a repetitively chirped optical carrier; this RF/optical waveform then is dispersed in one transverse dimension, and imaged onto a 2-dimensional transparency or spatial light modulator whose pixels are modulated with randomly chosen transmission or reflection coefficients (the optical mixing matrix). Following transmission through or reflection from the mixing matrix, the optical waveform from each row of the matrix is recombined and directed to a photodiode and electronics that integrate over the repetition period of the chirped source. Finally, each of these signals is digitized by an independent ADC sampling at a rate equal to the pulse repetition rate of the chirp source. A digital replica of the input RF signal can be recovered by digital signal processing from the digital output of the ADCs and the values of the transmission or reflection coefficients of the mixing matrix. The effective sampling rate is given by the number of pixels per row of the mixing matrix times the repetition rate of the chirp source while the effective resolution is controlled by the resolution of the electronic ADCs and the distortions introduced by the optical mixing process.