Optical analog-to-digital converter, optical analog-to-digital conversion method, photon quantization circuit and photonization method

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an optical analog/digital conversion device, an optical analog/digital conversion method, an optical quantization circuit, and an optical quantization method for establishing an ultra high-speed operation and high resolution (high quantization bit rate).SOLUTION: At the time of optically amplifying an optical pulse signal by an optical amplifier, a difference in optical intensity is converted into a difference in frequency by using a red chirp phenomenon in which frequency varies depending on light intensity. In this case, a probe optical signal having extremely narrow frequency distribution is also optically amplified to increase discrimination accuracy of frequency. The optically amplified optical pulse signal is transmitted through a plurality of optical filters having different thresholds, and a wavelength range is converted into the number of optical pulse signals to generate an optically quantized digital signal.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 3A