Patent ID: 7956788

Claim:
An analog-to-digital signal conversion apparatus, comprising: an optical element for providing a plurality of optical clock signals having an identical frequency, at least one of the optical clock signals having a phase offset from a second one of the optical clock signals, the phase offset having a selected value based at least on the number of optical clock signals provided; a plurality of sampling devices responsive to the optical clock signals for successively sampling an analog signal input to provide samples thereof, each of the optical clock signals being associated with a respective one of the sampling devices, at least one of the sampling devices being adapted to generate an electrical current whose amperage represents values of samples taken by the at least one sampling device; and one or more demultiplexers for distributing, in a time-controlled manner, the electrical current from the at least one sampling device to a plurality of processing elements for generating a digital signal representing values of quantized samples, which arc derived from the sample values represented by the amperage of the electrical current.