A 12.5 GSample/s Optical Digital-to-Analog Converter with 3. 8 Effective Bits
07 November 2004
Optical techniques have the potential to overcome speed limitations for digital-to-analog conversion. In this paper, we present a novel scheme for an optical digital-to-analog converter based on the coherent summation of optical phase-modulated signals. A first demonstration using commercial discrete components yielded in a 12.5 GSample digital-to-analog converter with a nominal resolution of 6 bits and a effective number of bits (ENOB) of 3.8.
