Analysis of the effects of jitter, relative intensity noise, and nonlinearity on a photonic digital-to-analog converter based on optical Nyquist pulse synthesis

Abstract

An analysis of an optical Nyquist pulse synthesizer using Mach-Zehnder modulators is presented. The analysis allows to predict the upper limit of the effective number of bits of this type of photonic digital-to-analog converter. The analytical solution has been verified by means of electro-optic simulations. With this analysis the limiting factor for certain scenarios: relative intensity noise, distortions by driving the Mach-Zehnder modulator, or the signal generator phase noise can quickly be identified.

Photonic-Assisted Arbitrary Waveform Generation for Uplink Applications in Beyond 5G Taking Advantage of Low Frequency Technology

“…Ultra-wideband carriers have a large impact on baseband (BB) processing systems, especially digital-to-analog converters (DACs) and analog-to-digital converters (ADC) [2]. With an eye on the future demand on such extreme wideband carriers, various photonic approaches for DAC and ADC have been pursued thus far [3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. We have also investigated several photonic approaches for ADC [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] and DAC [20].…”

“…However, several issues, including the analog resolution, cost, and power consumption become critical as the signal frequency rises beyond GHz [23]. Photonic AWGs using the spectral-domain and time-domain spectral shapers (SDSS and TDSS) are well-investigated [24][25][26][27][28][29] and are originally used for ultrafast optical arbitrary waveform synthesis.…”