12.5-GHz optically sampled interference-based photonic arbitrary waveform Generator

This work presents an actively sampled photonic arbitrary waveform generator based on differential lithium-niobate electrooptic modulators. Ultralow timing jitter 1550-nm mode-locked laser time samples three serially connected Mach-Zehnder modulators, which are driven by six 12.5-Gb/s signals. This equivalent of photonic digital-to-analog converter allows for synthesis of high-quality arbitrary waveforms (>30-dB spurious-free dynamic range) over Nyquist bandwidth without loss of performance.