Spectral Encoded Photonic Analog-to-Digital Converter Based on Cascaded Unbalanced MZMs

We present a novel scheme of a spectral encoded photonic analog-to-digital converter (ADC). Several cascaded unbalanced lithium niobate Mach-Zehnder modulators with doubling path length imbalances are used to convert the amplitude of the electrical analog signal to the shift of the transmission characteristic. Compared with former spectral encoded photonic ADCs, a particular benefit of our presented scheme is no requirement of any nonlinear effect to realize optical quantization.