Resolution Improvement of All-Optical Analog-to-Digital Conversion Employing Self-frequency Shift and Self-Phase-Modulation-Induced Spectral Compression

We demonstrate and investigate resolution improvement of optical quantization using soliton self-frequency shift (SSFS) and optical coding using optical interconnection for an all-optical analog-to-digital conversion (ADC). Incorporating spectral compression into the optical quantization allows us to improve the resolution bit according to the spectral compression ratio with keeping its throughput. The proposed scheme consists of optical quantization using SSFS and self-phase modulation (SPM) induced spectral compression and optical coding using optical interconnection based on a binary conversion table. In optical quantization, the powers of input signals are discriminated by referring to the center wavelengths after the SSFS. The compression of the spectral width allows us to emphasize the differences of their center wavelengths, and improve the number of resolution bits. Optical interconnection generates a bit-parallel binary code by appropriate allocation of a level identification signal, which is provided as a result of optical quantization. Experimental results show the eight periods transfer function, that means, the four read-out bit operation of the proposed scheme in binary code. Simulation results indicate that the proposed optical quantization has the potential of 100 GS/s and 4-b resolution, which could surpass the electrical bandwidth limitations.