Design of an ultra high-speed all-optical analog-to-digital converter

An all-optical analog-to-digital converter capable of sampling at 50 GS/s is described. The ADC works in the spectral domain, unlike the other all-optical or hybrid methods. The RF signal is sampled by electro-optically steerable gratings and quantized by a set of detectors with scalable apertures. Low timing jitter is provided by a mode-locked laser.