A photonic assisted analog-to-digital converter (p-ADC) based on a 10 GHz frequency comb source

The feasibility of a photonic-assisted analog-to-digital converter based on a frequency comb source operating at 10 GHz is numerically investigated. It is found that the effective number of bits (ENOB) monotonically decreases with the input RF frequencies. Nevertheless, it is found that ENOB of 4 can be achieved at the Nyquist sampling rate of 50 GHz using only 10 WDM channels. The results demonstrate that the system can be simplified by employing a high repetition rate pulsed source without greatly affecting the ADC performance.