Electronic Bottleneck Suppression in Next-generation Networks with Integrated Photonic Digital-to-analog Converters

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel coherent parallel photonic digital-to-analog converter that enables high-speed, energy-efficient signal conversion without domain crossing, suitable for next-generation data processing and communication systems.

Contribution

It presents a new photonic DAC design that eliminates the need for optical-electrical domain crossing, reducing size and power consumption while maintaining high sampling rates.

Findings

Successful experimental demonstration of the photonic DAC.

Achieves linear intensity weighting at high sampling rates.

Reduces footprint and power compared to existing photonic DACs.

Abstract

Digital-to-analog converters (DAC) are indispensable functional units in signal processing instrumentation and wide-band telecommunication links for both civil and military applications. Since photonic systems are capable of high data throughput and low latency, an increasingly found system limitation stems from the required domain-crossing such as digital-to-analog, and electronic-to-optical. A photonic DAC implementation, in contrast, enables a seamless signal conversion with respect to both energy efficiency and short signal delay, often require bulky discrete optical components and electric-optic transformation hence introducing inefficiencies. Here, we introduce a novel coherent parallel photonic DAC concept along with an experimental demonstration capable of performing this digital-to-analog conversion without optic-electric-optic domain crossing. This design hence guarantees a linear intensity weighting among bits operating at high sampling rates, yet at a reduced footprint and power consumption compared to other photonic alternatives. Importantly, this photonic DAC could create seamless interfaces of next-generation data processing hardware for data-centers, task-specific compute accelerators such as neuromorphic engines, and network edge processing applications.