Leaky Waveguide Deflector for 40 GS/s All-Optical ADC

International audienceDesign of an all-optical analog-to-digital converter (AOADC) is presented here based on a leaky waveguide deflector in electro-optic (EO) polymers. The principle of the AOADC is to convert an RF signal into a spatial sampled deflection angle variation of light, then quantize this deflected beam based on optical window and its related binary/Gray coding mask. This AOADC is designed for broadband applications working at frequencies above 20 GHz and to provide a resolution of better than 6 bits