Abstract

Photonic time stretch (PTS) has been intensively investigated in recent decades due to its potential application to ultra-wideband analog-to-digital conversion. A high-speed analog signal can be captured by an electronic analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with the help of the PTS technique, which slows down the speed of signal in the photonic domain. Unfortunately, the process of the time stretch is not linear due to the nonlinear modulation of the electro-optic intensity modulator in the PTS system, which means the undesired harmonics distortion. In this paper, we present an exact analytical model to fully characterize the harmonics generation in the PTS systems for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. We obtain concise and closed-form expressions for all harmonics of the PTS system with either a single-arm Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM) or a push-pull MZM. The presented model can largely simplify the PTS system design and the system parameters estimation, such as system bandwidth, harmonics power, time–bandwidth product, and dynamic range. The correctness of the mathematic model is verified by the numerical and experimental results.

© 2016 Optical Society of America

Photonic time-stretch based on phase modulation for sub-octave applications

Hongxia He, Shuna Yang, Bo Yang, Yanrong Zhai, Tao Jin, and Hao Chi
Appl. Opt. 60(22) 6487-6494 (2021)

Frequency-dependent noise figure analysis of continuous photonic time-stretch system

Boyu Xu, Changqiao Liu, Xiaofeng Jin, Xiangdong Jin, Xianbin Yu, Hao Chi, Shilie Zheng, and Xianmin Zhang
Appl. Opt. 56(29) 8246-8251 (2017)

Broadband and linearized photonic time-stretch analog-to-digital converter based on a compact dual-polarization modulator

Bo Yang, Zheng Ma, Shuna Yang, and Hao Chi
Appl. Opt. 62(4) 921-926 (2023)

Wideband sparse signal acquisition with ultrahigh sampling compression ratio based on continuous-time photonic time stretch and photonic compressive sampling

Bo Yang, Qing Xu, Shuna Yang, and Hao Chi
Appl. Opt. 61(6) 1344-1348 (2022)

Broadband linearization in photonic time-stretch analog-to-digital converters employing an asymmetrical dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator and a balanced detector

Di Peng, Zhiyao Zhang, Yangxue Ma, Yali Zhang, Shangjian Zhang, and Yong Liu
Opt. Express 24(11) 11546-11557 (2016)