Advanced Optical A/D Converter
Abstract
This program demonstrated the potential of optical techniques for superior wideband analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion. The key performance goals were a signal bandwidth of at least 1.5 GHz with precision of more than 4 bits. The approach should have potential for eventual significant extension beyond these performance levels. Signal bandwidths of more than 10 GHz, with precision of 8 bits, were long term goals. To summarize the final results, an experimental simulation of a four-channel optical analog-to-digital converter (ADC) operating at 4 GS/s with 2-GHz bandwidth was conducted. The precision obtained in the bandpass sampling mode (near 10 GHz) was 3.8 bits. For baseband signals of up to 2 GHz, the measured precision was 4.6 bits. This performance exceeded the original program goals and constitutes the best known performance obtained with an optics-based ADC approach. The optical ADC technique developed offers potential performance of 10 GHz bandwidth, 20 gigasamples/sec (GS/s) sampling rate, and precision of 6 bits or more. A secondary result from the testing was the development of a data reduction methodology that revealed a previously unreported correlation between jitter and pulse-energy fluctuations. The calculated jitter was twice as small as that derived using a commonly used power spectral density analysis that assumes no correlation between these quantities.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1993
- Accession Number
- ADA275663
Entities
People
- D. A. Leep
- J. A. Bell
- J. P. Lin
- M. C. Hamilton
Organizations
- Boeing Defense, Space & Security