Patent ID: 7973688

Claim:
An analog to digital converter (ADC) structure, comprising, a photonic filter bank having at least two filters, the at least two filters configured to create a corresponding spectral tributary from a baseband of an input signal at a target rate and the at least two filters configured to exhibit orthogonality properties between respective tributaries; an optical/electrical (O/E) converter coupled to each of the at least two filters in a respective spectral tributary to convert an optical input to an electrical output; an analog to digital converter (ADC) coupled to each of the O/E converters in a respective spectral tributary to sample the electrical output at a fraction of a target rate and to convert a sampled analog electrical output into a digital signal; and a synthesis filter coupled to each of the ADCs in a respective spectral tributary to reconstruct the input signal digitally at the target rate wherein said photonic filter-bank comprising an operation phase delay Δt of 20 ps(50 Gs/s) with a phase error of less than 0.1π in response to a laser of said input signal having a drift/linewidth of less than 0.25 GHz.