High-Performance Photonic Analog-to-Digital Converter and Low-Noise Mode-Locked Fiber Lasers

摘要

This project demonstrates three photonic analog-digital converters (ADCs) for high-speed, real-time digitization of microwave signals. The methods consist of a highly parallel photonic ADC, a time-division multiplexed system based on electro-optical Sagnac interferometry, and an alloptical quantizer based upon distributed phase modulation. The core of many photonic ADC designs relies upon a low-noise, actively modelocked fiber laser that has been developed at NRL. Photonic sampling of microwave signals is investigated especially concerning development of a low-noise optical clock. Optimization and system post-processing is simulated and compared with experimental data. Finally, the low-noise optical clock was used in a four-way collaborative research effort where NRL excited and characterized high-speed, high-current photoconductive switches.