Wideband photonic blind source separation with optical pulse sampling

TL;DR

This paper introduces an optical pulse sampling technique for photonic blind source separation that enables processing wideband signals at significantly lower sampling rates, reducing digital processing workload while maintaining signal integrity.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel optical pulse sampling method that allows wideband signal separation at ultra-low sampling rates using optical pulses, enhancing efficiency and accuracy.

Findings

Successfully separated signals over 100GHz bandwidth.

Achieved a dynamic range of 30dB.

Reduced digital processing workload significantly.

Abstract

We propose and experimentally demonstrate an optical pulse sampling method for photonic blind source separation. The photonic system processes and separates wideband signals based on the statistical information of the mixed signals and thus the sampling frequency can be orders of magnitude lower than the bandwidth of the signals. The ultra-fast optical pulse functions as a tweezer that collects samples of the signals at very low sampling rates, and each sample is short enough to maintain the statistical properties of the signals. The low sampling frequency reduces the workloads of the analog to digital conversion and digital signal processing systems. In the meantime, the short pulse sampling maintains the accuracy of the sampled signals, so the statistical properties of the undersampling signals are the same as the statistical properties of the original signals. With the optical pulses generated from a mode-locked laser, the optical pulse sampling system is able to process and separate mixed signals with bandwidth over 100GHz and achieves a dynamic range of 30dB.