Quantization Error Improvement for Optical Quantization Using Dual Rail Configuration

Abstract

We investigate a quantization error improvement technique using a dual rail configuration for optical quantization. Our proposed optical quantization uses intensity-to-wavelength conversion based on soliton self-frequency shift and spectral compression based on self-phase modulation. However, some unfavorable input peak power regions exist due to stagnations of wavelength shift or distortions of spectral compression. These phenomena could induce a serious quantization error and degrade the effective number of bit (ENOB). In this work, we propose a quantization error improvement technique which can make up for the unfavorable input peak power regions. We experimentally verify the quantization error improvement effect by the proposed technique in 6 bit optical quantization. The estimated ENOB is improved from 5.35 bit to 5.66 bit. In addition, we examine the XPM influence between counter-propagating pulses at high sampling rate. Experimental results and numerical simulation show that the XPM influence is negligible under ∼40 GS/s conditions.