Integrated source-free all optical sampling with a sampling rate of up to three times the RF bandwidth of silicon photonic MZM.

ABSTRACT

Source-free all optical sampling, based on the convolution of the signal spectrum with a frequency comb in an electronic-photonic, co-integrated silicon device will be presented for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. The method has the potential to achieve very high precision, requires only low power and can be fully tunable in the electrical domain. Sampling rates of three and four times the RF bandwidths of the photonics and electronics can be achieved. Thus, the presented method might lead to low-footprint, fully-integrated, precise, electrically tunable, photonic ADCs with very high-analog bandwidths for the digital infrastructure of tomorrow.