PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16079838
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-08
Publication Date: 2019-03
Patent Classification: ["341", "155000"]

Abstract:
A photonic feedforward analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is provided. According to one aspect of the invention, the signal to be digitized is applied to only one electro-optic modulator. High speed is achieved by taking advantage of the fundamental property of a Pockels Cell to control wave polarization using the electro-optic effect. In a further aspect, once a bit is determined, its state is fed forward to the next least significant bit to aid in determination of the next lower bit. This nonlinear feedforward aspect of the ADC provides simplicity of its architecture.

Claim (Index 1):
A photonic feedforward analog-to-digital converter, comprising:\n an optical source configured to produce a source optical signal having a value of a characteristic; a modulator comprising an optical input, an optical output and an electrical signal input, wherein the modulator is configured to receive the source optical signal at the optical input of the modulator and provide at the optical output of the modulator a modulated optical signal, the modulated optical signal having a value of the characteristic that is changed relative to the value of the characteristic of the source optical signal based on the electrical signal; a plurality of stages, each of the plurality of stages comprising a stage optical input, a stage optical output, and a digital output; wherein each of the plurality of stage is configured to:\n set the value of the digital output based on the value of the characteristic of an optical signal at the stage optical input relative to a stage threshold value; and \n provide at the stage optical output an optical signal having the value of the characteristic of the optical signal at the stage optical input selectively modified based on the relative value of the characteristic of the optical signal at the stage optical input and the stage threshold value, \n wherein:\n the plurality of stages are coupled together in an order; \n a stage optical input of a first of the plurality of stages is coupled to the optical output of the modulator; and \n for each of the plurality of stages, other than the first of the plurality of stages, the stage optical input is coupled to the stage optical output of a preceding stage in the order.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 7.0
- Percentile: 96.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.60317
- Patent Class: 341.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['13386422', '13963876', '15875138', '13855564', '13963899']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.5778659623349388
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.4806568073270711
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.568145046834152
- Mean Citation Score: 194.57104400000003
- Max Citation Score: 207.06448
- Similarity Product: 168.34252611171723

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 0
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 0
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test