Photonic crystals and photonic analog-to-digital converters

摘要

A system and method for quantizing a photonic signal (34, 56) involves passing it through a photonic crystal (30, 52) having a periodic structure with localized defects for splitting the photonic signal into a plurality of quantized photonic signal components (36, 38) and for directing the quantized photonic signals to a set of optical detectors (51); digital conversion of the photonic signal can occur by performing a threshold comparison of the quantized components, either in the electrical domain through comparators (57) or in the optical domain through optical limiters (72).