An Interferometer-based Optoelectronic Arbitrary Waveform Generator

A novel optoelectronic arbitrary waveform generator using high-speed optical phase modulators in an interferometric configuration is proposed. In our approach, optical and electrical techniques are combined to achieve the best overall performance. This technique has the potential to generate high resolution (8 bits and higher) waveforms with bandwidth up to 10 GHz and beyond. Using commercially available components we demonstrate a 12.5 GSample/s digital-to-analog converter with 5.5 effective bits up to Nyquist.