Electro-optical analog-to-digital converter based on LiNbO3 Mach-Zehnder modulators

We propose a novel scheme that can realize high-precision and high-speed electro-optical analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The scheme is based on the Taylor´s structure. In contrast to the conventional Taylor´s structure, where modulators are in parallel, we use cascaded modulators which can solve the low precision problem of the conventional Taylor´s structure. We have analyzed the performance of the proposed ADC structure in theory, the theoretical analysis shows that the precision of our scheme could be 10-bits. The speed in operating of our scheme is related with the speed of modulator. In our scheme, the modulator is LiNbO₃ Mach Zehnder interferometric modulator with a low half-wave voltage, which 40 GHz can be achieved.