Architecture for Integrated RF Photonic Downconversion of Electronic Signals

TL;DR

This paper presents an integrated RF photonic downconverter leveraging a hybrid microcomb and electro-optic comb to improve ADC performance, address SWaP concerns, and resolve frequency ambiguity issues for field deployment.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hybrid microcomb/electro-optic comb design for RF photonic downconversion, enhancing integration and practical deployment capabilities.

Findings

Potential for easy integration and field deployment.

Addresses SWaP concerns in RF photonic systems.

Mitigates frequency ambiguity issues.

Abstract

Electronic analog to digital converters (ADCs) are running up against the well-known bit depth vs bandwidth tradeoff. Towards this end, RF photonic-enhanced ADCs have been the subject of interest for some time. Optical frequency comb technology has been used as a workhorse underlying many of these architectures. Unfortunately, such designs must generally grapple with SWaP concerns, as well as frequency ambiguity issues which threaten to obscure critical spectral information of detected RF signals. In this work, we address these concerns via an RF photonic downconverter with potential for easy integration and field deployment by leveraging a novel hybrid microcomb / electro-optic comb design.