HIGHLY PARALLEL PULSED OPTOELECTRONIC ANALOG-DIGITAL CONVERTER

We characterize the performance of a highly parallel pulsed optoelectr onic analog to digital converter. The system is based on a time-domain to wavelength-domain mapping, such that an input analog signal is par allelized using a wavelength-division-demultiplexed scheme. Each paral lel wavelength channel is then digitized using conventional, slow elec tronic analog-digital converters. We use narrow-band signals up to 18 GHz and histogram testing to characterize the system. From the measure ments, we deduce the effective number of bits of the system to be simi lar to 6 and similar to 5 bits for 4 and 36 giga-samples-per-second (G SPS) sampling rates, respectively.