Patent ID: 6326910
Filing Date: 2001-12-04
Classification: G02F,H03M

Abstract:
A photonic analog-to-digital converter, comprising:a source of coherent light;a sampling clock, effective for converting said coherent light into a first stream of coherent light pulses;an electro-optic modulator, effective for receiving as inputs said first stream and an analog signal, the output of said modulator being a second stream of modulated coherent light pulses;an optical splitter, effective for splitting said second stream into a plurality of streams, each of said streams comprising modulated coherent light pulses;a passive photonic quantizer, effective for quantizing said plurality of streams, said quantizer further comprising a plurality of light absorbers;a plurality of optical delay lines, effective for aligning a quantized plurality of streams to a discrete instant at which each member of said plurality of streams was sampled from said analog signal;a plurality of optical detectors, effective for converting said quantized plurality of streams into a plurality of detected voltages;a plurality of comparators for comparing said plurality of detected voltages to a reference voltage, whereby a logical ""1"" is produced if said detected voltage is at least equal to a reference voltage and a logical ""0"" is produced if said detected voltage is less than said reference voltage; anda digital device, effective for storing a plurality of logical ""1"" and logical ""0"" as a digital word synchronous with said sampling clock.