Toward a 100-GSample/s photonic A-D converter

We propose a 100-GSample-per-second (GSPS) realtime photonic analog-to-digi tal converter architecture and demonstrate the 100-GSPS photonic sampling a nd 1:8 time-division optical demultiplexing required to implement such a co nverter. The high-speed demultiplexing is achieved with a lithium niobate i ntensity modulator-based serial-parallel converter. Experimental results ar e presented indicating the potential for >4-bit performance in a fully impl emented analog-to-digital conversion system.