Simplified 2-bit photonic digital-to-analog conversion unit based on polarization multiplexing

摘要

A 2-bit photonic digital-to-analog conversion unit is proposed and demonstrated based on polarization multiplexing. The proposed 2-bit digital-to-analog converter (DAC) unit is realized by optical intensity weighting and summing, and its complexity is greatly reduced compared with the traditional 2-bit photonic DACs. Performance of the proposed 2-bit DAC unit is experimentally investigated. The established 2-bit DAC unit achieves a good linear transfer function, and the effective number of bits is calculated to be 1.3. Based on the proposed 2-bit DAC unit, two DAC structures with higher (＞2) bit resolutions are proposed and discussed, and the system complexity is expected to be reduced by half by using the proposed technique.