100 gigasamples per second 12 bits optoelectronic analog-to-digital converter design and implementation based on cellular polyphase-sampling architecture.

摘要

The next generation digital information systems such as high performance computers, multigigabit/sec communication networks, distributed sensors, three dimensional digital imaging systems etc, will require analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) with high sampling rates exceeding 10 Gigasamples per second (GSPS) and high bit resolution of at least 10 bits. Such performance criteria are difficult to achieve with silicon electronics technology because the switching speeds peak at about 10-20GHz. Also, timing jitters, amplitude fluctuations, phase noise, thermal noise, and harmonic distortion, all contribute to reductions in ADC bit resolution as sampling rate increases. Photonics ADCs are rapidly emerging as the enabling technologies for high-performance digital signal processing systems. For this technology, high optical pulses repetition rate (in the order of GHz) with low time jitter and pulse width in the femtoseconds regime are the major attractive characteristics of optical sources.;In this dissertation work, a novel 102.4 GSPS 12-bit optoelectronic analog-to-digital converter architecture that is based on a Cellular Polyphase-Sampling architecture is introduced. First, a 102.4 GHz all-optical clock was designed and implemented using a femtosecond laser source and passive optical components. Second, a novel optoelectronic architecture for optical sampling and parallel demultiplexing of different phases (polyphase) of an input analog signal is presented. The optoelectronic sampling and demultiplexing architecture is composed by 20 optoelectronic subcircuit referred as "OE-Cell"; these have been designed and implemented using optical passive components and InGaAs PIN photodiodes. A unique feature of this approach is that the optically sampled RF signal always remains in the electrical domain and thus eliminates the need for electrical-to-optical and optical-to-electrical conversions. The electrical-in to electrical-out transfer functions of the sampling and demutliplexing circuits allows its integration with existing electronic quantization circuits. Third, an all-electronic quantization, encoding and multiplexing network was designed and implemented using off-the-shelf 12-bit resolution electronics quantizers and fast-speed multiplexers.